


He Knows More Than You Do

by ChibiSquirt



Series: STH verse [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: (Consensual voyeurism only), Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, By which I mean more science kink and less doctor/patient role play but still, Dom/sub Undertones, I heard a rumor there may be sounding in the next chapter!, Light Bondage, M/M, Masturbation, Medical Kink, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Porn, Porn with Feelings, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Sounding, Super Soldier Serum, This fic has been up five minutes and I'm remembering tags I forgot, Voyeurism, Writing on Skin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2018-12-10 04:01:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 35,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11683599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibiSquirt/pseuds/ChibiSquirt
Summary: “It’s the science,” Tony blurted, and that definitely only made it worse.  He spat it all out at once, trying to get it over with:  “It’s the science, okay?  Steve has all theseenhancements,he’s notnormal,and everybody knew— it is inliterally every scientist’snotes! — that there was some change to sexual functioning, butnobody knew what,and I’vethoughtabout it, okay?  That’s it!  That’s the only reason!  Nothing more!”  He spread his hands defensively and then, only then, dared a look at Steve.Steve looked... thoughtful?  Or maybe constipated, or bored, or just drunk.  Whatever it was, it wasn’t punching Tony in the face, so Tony decided to take it and run.“Look, it’s pretty much got to be the stamina or the recovery rate,” he blurted, because apparently he hadno control over his mouth.“The only question is, which.  But it’sjust for science,okay?”(Spoiler alert:  It was not just for science.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [juanitatequila](https://archiveofourown.org/users/juanitatequila/gifts).



> First Chapter of my Stony Trumps Hate fic! My *first* Stony Trumps Hate fic, rather, and I think I am just as excited about the second one.
> 
> I am having *so much fun* writing this, you guys, you have no idea. Many thanks to JuanitaTequila to coming up with the prompt, and bearing with me patiently while I worked on this! Also many thanks to the folks in the Stucky Big Bang slack who helped me workshop, and finally to Valmasy, who beta'ed for me.

Nobody was quite comfortable at the party.

They weren’t in the Tower, and the cast was different— Steve’s veteran buddies were absent, as were Thor and Bruce, but Fury and Wanda were both present.  But everyone was jumpy, anyway, because the feel was too close— too similar— to the party after Sokovia.

Or before Sokovia, if one looked at it a different way.

Point was:  things were tense.

They were, however, all making heartfelt strides towards cutting that tension, primarily through the old-school, tried-and-true method of intoxication.  It being a Christmas party, Clint had egg nog— which Sam had refused to touch, claiming it was disgusting— Hill and Sam had spiced brandy, and Steve still had Thor’s stash of Asgardian liquor, aged for thousands of years in Asgardian oak, blah blah blah, Tony hadn’t really been listening.  The point was, the stuff worked on Steve, and that was fucking important, because _nothing_ worked on Steve, and if ever there was someone who deserved to let loose a bit, it was Captain Buttoned-Down himself.

There were also drinking games.  Terrible, terrible drinking games.

Natasha was winning.

“It’s not _Truth or Dare,”_ Hill was insisting.  She wasn’t quite sloppy, but her hair was out of its bun, and her posture had relaxed from its typical ramrod-straight status.  Now she was only _mostly-_ straight— hopefully, in more ways than one.  Like a trombone slide.

“It’s basically _Truth or Dare,”_ Rhodey said.  Rhodey was drinking water, poor guy; _somebody_ had to be on duty, and Tony was fucked if it was going to be him.  

Clearly, the choice of beverage was affecting Rhodey’s judgement.  “It’s not _Truth or Dare,”_ Tony insisted.  “There are no dares!  It’s just truths!”

“Yeah?  So what’s it called, then?   _Just Truths?_ ” Clint asked, settling into his seat.

“Basically.”

“Basically?!”

“It’s called _Uncomfortable Truths,_ okay?  It’s supposed to be embarrassing, and all of you sadists are far too good at it.”

“Yeah...?”  Natasha raised one eyebrow, and then slowly— like a very large tree starting to topple— shifted into a more comfortable position.  She also blinked, equally slowly.

...Maybe Natasha _wasn’t_ winning, after all.

“...and who chose to call it that?” she asked.

Okay, nevermind; she was winning.  

“Tony did.”  Rhodey reached over to Hill’s cup and fished the orange off the side, popping the flesh part into his mouth.  “When he was sixteen.”

“You were inventing drinking games when you were sixteen?”  Steve raised his eyebrows at Tony.

“I was getting arrested for underage drinking and driving, and narrowly escaping a prostitution charge, when I was sixteen,” Tony told him shortly.  “Why are we discussing this, again?”

“Because you’re stalling,” said Clint.  “It’s your turn.”

“Shit.  Is it?”

Nods around the circle.  

“Alright!  What was the question?”

 _Groans_ around the circle.  

“Which Avenger have you thought most about fucking, and why?” Sam said, repeating his question.  His eyes were both light and lighthearted, and he was clearly enjoying having the least history— and therefore, the most ability to bullshit— with the rest of the group.

“Alright, alright, alright, I can do this.”  Tony slammed back the rest of his scotch, silently said goodbye to his dignity, and sat up straight.  Natasha smirked, clearly anticipating that— since the only two women on the team were her and Wanda— he was going to pick her, but...  

“Definitely Steve,” he declared.

Aaaaand the crowd went wild.

“I mean, I can’t blame you,” Clint allowed.  He hiccuped up egg-nog, and gestured at Steve, who was sitting up straight, wide-eyed and— and— and _muscular,_ a shocked expression on his face.  “I mean... c’mon!”

“That’s not why!”

“Uh-huh.”  Sam slouched in his chair, smirking.  “Sure.”

“It isn’t!”  Tony risked a glance at Natasha, who was hopefully not feeling slighted—

— aaaaand, she was _also_ smirking.  

Oh, this was gonna _suck._

“It’s the science,” Tony blurted, and that definitely only made it worse.  He spat it all out at once, trying to get it over with:  “It’s the science, okay?  Steve has all these _enhancements,_ he’s not _normal,_ and everybody knew— it is in _literally every scientist’s_ notes! — that there was some change to sexual functioning, but _nobody knew what,_ and I’ve _thought_ about it, okay?  That’s it!  That’s the only reason!  Nothing more!”  He spread his hands defensively and then, only then, dared a look at Steve.  

Steve looked... thoughtful?  Or maybe constipated, or bored, or just drunk.  Whatever it was, it wasn’t punching Tony in the face, so Tony decided to take it and run.  

“Look, it’s pretty much got to be the stamina or the recovery rate,” he blurted, because apparently he had _no control over his mouth._ “The only question is, which.  But _it’s just for science, okay?_ I wasn’t thinking about it in a gay way.”  

Eyes wide, he watched Steve carefully for his reaction.  It was like the rest of the group just faded away, erasing themselves into inconsequentiality.  All he worried about— all he _cared_ about— was Steve.  

What Steve thought, that was.  

“Hmmm....”  Steve uncapped the Asgardian liqueur, shaking about five drops into his vodka while his brow furrowed.  “...Not in a gay way?” he asked.

“No!  Nope.  Definitely not.”

Steve’s eyes widened.  “But, Tony!” he protested.  He almost, _almost_ managed to pull off the innocent tone, too.  “What’s so wrong about thinking about it in a _happy_ way?”

Tony was drunk enough that it actually took him a second to catch the mono-entendre.  He dropped his jaw for a second, but that was alright; the group had his back, booing and throwing used cocktail napkins at Steve until, laughing, he admitted defeat.  After that, it was Tony’s turn to ask someone a question, and the game— and the group— moved on.

 

* * *

 

Tony made him work for it, but Steve eventually cornered him a couple days later in the workshop, which— upon reflection— was actually a fairly appropriate place for it.  

Tony was caught by surprise, for once.  There had been a lot of uncomfortable truths revealed that night, and Tony’s had faded in comparison to some of them.  There were definitely worse things brought to light, suffice it to say.  So Tony’s confession had seemed to be a lighthearted source of ribbing, at worst, and he really wasn’t expecting anything to come of it.  

So he definitely wasn’t looking for Steve to corner him in the workshop, saying, “We could find out.”

“Find out _what?”_ Tony asked, having no antecedent for this.  He also wasn’t looking at Steve to get any cues from his body language or facial expressions— in fact, he was welding a car engine into place, and Steve was lucky Tony hadn’t jumped and lit the thing on fire when he spoke.  So it wasn’t like he could have put the whole thing together from _context clues._

Still, Steve’s feet looked fidgety.  “About... you know.”

“I really don’t.”  He clicked off the welding torch irritably— no chance he was doing his best work with Captain Distraction in the room— and then turned, coming out from under the lifted car in a half-crouch, only then catching his first good look at Steve.

Oh.

Oh, God.

So here was a fact:  Steve frequently wore normal clothes.  Slightly-too-small clothes, admittedly, but:  jeans, t-shirts, sneakers.  The whole nine yards— or, rather, _not_ the whole nine yards.  Which was kind of the point.

Anyway, Steve in normal-person-esque clothes was, you know, a great sight.  Pleasurable.   _Suitable for further contemplation._

But Steve in the _suit...._

It might have been a kink.  Scratch that, it was _most definitely_ a kink, specifically _Tony’s_ kink, but holy shit— Steve in the Captain America suit was hot.

But this was the level beyond that, even.

Because Steve was wearing the Captain America suit, yes.  He was wearing the strategically-clingy trousers.  He was wearing the patriotically-buff boots.  He wasn’t wearing the helmet, but from the disarray of his hair, he had been recently.  

Most of all, though, he was wearing the jacket.  

Kind of.

It was on him, technically, but it was hanging open, the zippers at the shoulders unzipped, the front agape, revealing miles of smooth, all-American muscle tightly enclosed in a plain white undershirt which should not— _should not—_ have done those things to Tony’s stomach, but they were, and now Tony had to think through it, which was _frankly unlikely,_ and—

Jesus Christ.

This wasn’t just Captain America; this was Captain America, _in deshabille._

What had Steve been saying?  For _some reason,_ Tony had mysteriously forgotten...  “Sorry... what?”

Steve turned bright red, but gritted his teeth and spelled it all out.  “They never tested it,” he growled.  “The changes to my... my reproductive system.”  

Reproductive...?  

Oh.

_Oh!_

“And you want... what?”  Tony did a double-take.  “You want _me_ to measure it?!”

Steve met his eyes squarely, his confidence belied by the way his shoulders were creeping up around his ears.  “If you’re interested in knowing,” he agreed, his gaze burning like a dare.

Well, then.

Tony’s heart hammered too-quick in his chest, and he found his breath speeding up to match it.  He had _always_ been up for a dare. “Sure,” he said, voice cracking.  He swallowed and re-focused, pulling his mind away from the spiraling possibilities and back down to the conversation at hand.  

_Aha..._

So to speak.

“You, uh...  You want to try this... now?”

 _“Please,”_ Steve answered immediately.  One might almost have said _urgently;_ there was a sort of pressure, an excited and dark need, underlying the single word.

Tony blinked, then covered his surprise with his usual bravado.  “Sure,” he said again, nodding too fast.  “Can do.”  He stepped to the right, eyes casting around the workshop, but there was really only one place to do this, so...  “Follow me,” he said, leading the way deeper into the lab.  

He didn’t use it much anymore, not since Extremis, and the surgery, and all.  He found that it brought up bad memories, things he’d rather forget.  Things like the hopelessness of watching Obie— Obadiah— _Stane—_ walk away with the arc reactor, with his _heart._  Things like the look of disgust on Pepper’s face when she reached into his chest, which really— in retrospect, if he’d been thinking clearly, which of course he _hadn’t_ been— his fault— but really, it _should_ have tipped him off that she was a little too normal to be with him forever.

Not that there was anything wrong with that.

Anyway, the point was, he never _used_ the damned thing— didn’t even know why he’d kept it, really, it wasn’t like he wasn’t willing to throw things away when needed, but...  

...but he still had the chair, was where this all was going.  The modified dentist’s chair that he had used for years as the maintenance station whenever he had to work on his arc reactor.  The one with the easily-cleaned plastic polymer cover.  The one with the tool table attached on the right.  The one with the light directly above it and the monitoring equipment built into the walls already aimed at it.  

Speaking of which...  As Steve walked behind him, Tony gestured with his hands held carefully in front of him for Friday to remain silent, figuring that Steve would be reluctant to do anything in front of a lady. Or, well...  Tony would have figured on Steve being reluctant to do _any_ of this, so maybe he would be okay with it, but...  No need to risk it, right?

Steve caught his breath with a tiny hitching noise when he saw where Tony was leading him.  He looked over at Tony, wide-eyed but with sharpness underneath it.  

“From when I was operating on myself,” Tony explained, answering the unspoken question.  “Putting in new versions of the arc reactor.  The little table hooked to the side was useful.”

Steve made a _fair-enough_ face, then hesitated.  

“Go ahead and take off your shirt,” Tony told him.  He kept his voice low, even and in control.  No point in spooking Steve, after all.  “And your undershirt, too.  No point in getting them messy.”

Steve nodded.  “Trousers, too, I suppose.”

“No,” Tony snapped before realizing he even had an opinion about it.  He took a calming breath and answered more clearly, “No, go ahead and leave those on for a moment.  I have to set up a couple things, you might as well be comfortable while I do.”

Steve’s eyes widened, and he nodded jerkily, moving towards the seat.  

Tony narrowed his eyes.  “Did you not expect me to take you up on this?” he asked.  “You seem awfully nervous for the guy who came down here and suggested it.”

“So what?”  Steve scowled, not meeting his eyes.  “I’m allowed to be nervous.  It’s, uh, performing in front of another person, I’ve always been nervous about that—”

“You _what?”_  Tony burst out laughing, and Steve’s eyes widened in horror.

“Not like that!”  His face twisted in embarrassment.  “I meant like the _stage!_  The USO!”

That didn’t exactly make it better, though; Tony laughed even harder, bending forward and holding his stomach at the x-rated mental images that followed, his eyes watering.  Steve caught his thought— specifically the thought featuring Steve on a stage, with chorus girls, without pants— and turned a dull, mortified red.  He slumped back into what Tony knew was the surprisingly comfortable embrace of the exam chair.  “I meant the singing and dancing,” he insisted in a mutter.

“Oh, I’m sure!”  Tony wheezed for a moment, catching his breath, and then pushed himself back into a relatively upright position.  He wiped his eyes and patted Steve’s shoulder before moving off into the workshop.  “Just stay there!” he called over his shoulder.  

He wondered, as he moved around the shop looking for a lubricant that was safe for use on humans and a box of those big, soft, disposable shop towels, why exactly Steve _had_ come down and asked _him_ for this.  It couldn’t just be that he was curious; he might be, but there was no way that was the whole reason.  

“What are you doing?” Steve called, craning his neck around the edge of the chair, as Tony moved further back into the workshop.

“Getting supplies!”  Tony popped open the cabinets on the back wall of the workshop one by one, scanning each and, when necessary, rifling through them, looking for what he needed.  He found it in the second-to-last one— of course he did; wasn’t that always the way? — and snatched it out, heading back over to Steve at a pace that wasn’t a run, but was sure as hell quicker than a walk.  Which probably would have been smarter if he had been able to see where he was going— the pile in his arms was just big enough that he couldn’t see his feet or anything on the ground for six feet in front of him— but he made it without running into anything or tripping, so he was calling it a win.

He dumped his pile onto a nearby workbench, then started sorting it, moving some things to the supply table attached to the exam chair:  the lube, the towels, and a bundle of wires.  The rest of the items he set up on the workbench.  

Particularly, the camera.

Steve obviously knew what it was.  His mouth opened, as if he were going to ask, “What is that?” but then realized he knew the answer.  His eyes widened, and Tony waited for him to object— documentation was a cornerstone of any scientific testing, but there were other ways to document, after all— but he didn’t.  Instead, he closed his mouth again, flushing lightly, then suddenly blushing _very_ hard and refusing to meet Tony’s eyes.

...Yeah, there was _no way in hell_ Tony wasn’t going to be reviewing this later, at his leisure.  

Tony finished setting up the camera, checking to make sure Steve was in view on it and that the volume was on, then turned back to Steve.  “You know,” he said, picking up the wires and the pad of disposable electrodes, “if you had given me a head’s-up on this, I could have ordered some stuff.  Taken some more complete measurements.”  He started pealing electrodes off the pad, sticking them to Steve’s chest, which jerked and hitched under his fingers as Steve started gasping.  

He knew what an EKG looked like.  He knew Tony was going to be watching his pulse race, would be inside his chest, inside his skin, monitoring every last beat of his heart from twelve directions at once.  Knew there would be no lying to the EKG, no pretending that something wasn’t working for him, no acting as if one-and-done— or four-and-done— was enough.

Apparently, he kind of liked the idea, because he was shaking— not in fear; arousal— as Tony hooked up the electrodes to the wires.  

Deliberately, Tony let his hands slow down, moving from a clinical air to something more... _lingering._ He clipped each wire on like it was part of an elaborate ritual, stroking the wire out to their full length— only a little bit to keep the leads from tangling together— and keeping his fingers straight, elegant, as they hooked them on.  

Steve leaned back in the chair, letting his head thump into the headrest, neck open and _available_ in a way which was just _damned_ tempting.  His eyes were closed, his mouth slightly open, and he was full-on shuddering with every lead Tony hooked up.

Tony was starting to wonder if maybe it had _been a while_  for Steve.

He stopped after the twelfth lead, poking the machine— a portable one, but it had been sitting right behind the chair the whole time— to turn it on, watching Steve out of the corner of his eye while it loaded.  As the machine chimed— _Ready!_ the helpful cartoon doctor informed him— Steve stilled, getting ahold of himself a bit, although his eyes were still closed, and his muscles were still a familiar kind of tense.

“You okay?” Tony asked, resting an arm on the EKG stand.  He kept his posture loose and casual, his voice calm and soothing.  Steve shuddered at it, anyway, though.  “You seem kind of...”  He searched desperately for a neutral phrase that would still communicate what he meant.  “...keyed up?”

Steve shivered, then nodded, not opening his eyes.  “I have to not think about it, most of the time.”  He thrashed his head, left-right-left, and then shuddered again.  “After the serum...  I’m so _sensitive,_ Tony.”  He opened his eyes, mere slits of deep, deep blue.  The pupils were _huge,_ and Tony made a mental note to turn the light on before they got this party too started.  

Steve caught the look in his eye, and shuddered yet again.

Tony laughed, just a quick bark, incredulous, nervous.  “You okay?” he repeated.

Steve gasped, then gasped again and spoke.  “I really need to get my pants off,” he said, biting his lower lip and then letting it slide, pink and plump, from between his teeth.

Tony gulped, then reached over and flicked on the light above the chair, bathing them in the hot, direct light of 120,000 lux.  Steve jerked, a full-body spasm, underneath him.  Then Tony watched his own hands as they dropped to the flies of Steve’s fucking _Captain America pants,_ opening the flies— button flies, always button flies with Steve, and why was that?  And when had Tony (apparently) noticed? — and tugging them wide.  “Lift— lift up,” he said, his voice cracking in the middle, and Steve did, instantly, arching off the chair like he’d been wanting to do so for hours.  Tony slipped his hands inside Steve’s shorts, too, as flat as he could, and moved the whole mess out— around the _incredibly_ solid erection— and downwards, letting them tangle around Steve’s thighs, pinning him.

“Oh-kayyyy....  Now go back down,” Tony instructed, pushing at Steve’s high-arched hip with one finger.

Except Steve _didn’t_ go down, exactly.  Instead, he went _off,_ jerking and coming, untouched, thick white streams of him arching out, almost artistically, snaking over his chest and abs, glistening against his skin, so that Tony was glad he had been handling Steve from the side:  he would have hated to have obstructed the camera during this.  Steve’s head couldn’t fall back limply, because it already _was_ back, pressed against the headrest, but his neck arched like he _wanted_ it to, and he was gasping like he’d run a mile— or, since it was Steve, twenty miles:  huge, bellows-like breaths sucked through a tight throat, making his massive chest heave.  

He shivered as he came down, eyes opening with what looked like dread, or embarrassment, as he looked up at Tony.  

He licked his lips, and gave a tiny sigh.

Tony raised his eyebrows, prompting.  

“W-What I was saying,” Steve told him, “was that since the serum, I’m very... sensitive.  I can...”  A short, evocative gesture with one hand made it clear Steve was referring to orgasm.  “...from almost nothing.  So most of the time, I don’t even think about it— just keep that portion of my mind completely turned off— and when I _do...”_

“...it doesn’t take much,” Tony finished for him.  Understatement of the _century,_ he thought to himself, but on the other hand, they were going to have some _fun_ with this.  “Got it.  Well, at least you get to skip the most disgusting parts when you watch porn.”  He thought about getting a towel and wiping Steve off, but just as he thought it, Steve’s dick twitched— impossibly soon, but then, that was part of what they were testing; Tony could get out the stopwatch when he re-watched the footage.  He turned and went into the workshop, looking for his favorite rolling stool.

Behind him, Steve was chuckling, embarrassed and (Tony thought, based on his tone) just a little proud.  “I don’t even _need_ porn,” he admitted.  “Hell, half the time, I don’t even need a fantasy— just a tight pair of pants and a few minutes alone.”

“Really?  No porn at all?”  Tony came back, dragging the stool behind him, and as he came up alongside the Captain, he blinked:  Steve’s dick was already hard again, not tight to his belly as it had been before he came, but definitely engorged, lying red and hungry against the notch in his hip.

Tony hitched himself into the stool, aware that he was frankly staring.

“I have a forty-five minute video segment from the surveillance in the gym,” Steve said musingly, “of Thor and Natasha sparring hand-to-hand.  I’ve never made it more than six minutes into that one.”

Tony blinked, then smirked.  Ridiculously, he felt a faint blush creep up his neck at the mental image— although whether it was the image of Thor and Natasha, or the image of Steve _watching_ Thor and Natasha, he couldn’t have said.  “If it’s the video I’m thinking of, then you might want to take the time,” he got out, his voice strangling as he thought about it.  “She actually straddles him and _rides him while he bucks_ around minute twenty-eight.”

Steve groaned, arching his back.  His hips canted up like he could imagine her on top of him— and he probably _could:_ eidetic memory, long history of sparring with her, that definitely was something that had happened in the past...  Tony licked his lips as Steve’s hips pumped, not all the way there yet but getting there fast, fucking the air, precome glistening at the head of his penis, the balls purpling already.  

He asked, “Can you come untouched again?”  

Steve’s eyes were clenching shut, closing out the room— reasonable; excess stimulation would be distracting, too many thoughts going at once; Tony had definitely had that problem himself— and his hands were clenching into fists at his side, arms tense with the effort of _not touching._ His breath was speeding, his head tossing back and forth.  Above the fabric of his uniform pants, his thighs were like iron bars, tense enough Tony was willing to bet he could bounce a pen off of them.  In fact...

“Keep going, just testing a theory here,” he said, and picked up the nearest bit of nothing— a screw, in this case, half-inch long but with a broad head, probably from a starter motor, and when had he been working on a starter motor in here? — and tossed it— and yep, it bounced right off, getting a good eight inches of air before arching to the ground.  

Steve moaned at the light impact, his hips jerking, and Tony couldn’t help but comment.  “Can you convert any stimulation to eroticism?” he asked.  “That probably stung, but you didn’t process it as stinging, did you?  You processed it as, what?”

Steve shook his head back and forth, twice, gasping as he answered, almost-but-not-quite beyond words.  “Good-stinging,” he said, “Dunno how to say.  ‘Snice.”

“Okay,” Tony said lightly.  He tilted his head to the side, watching— discreetly adjusting himself in his pants, because _my god—_ and trying not to push too hard.

After a moment, though— fifteen seconds?  Twenty?  Hard to measure time with Steve writhing in front of him, but it was probably not as long as it seemed— he realized that Steve wasn’t going to make any progress without _something:_ some touch, either his own or from Tony, or some mental stimulus, or even just increased friction against his own stomach.

Mental stimulus would have the least interference with their results, Tony figured.

So he opened his mouth again.

“Does being watched have any effect?” he asked.  He tried to keep his voice objective, as if they were on a picnic and he were idly pondering the rotation of the sun or something— something less immediate, less intimate, than what he was actually asking.  “Do you find that observation increases your arousal?”

It obviously did.  Steve gasped, arching his back.  He became visibly harder, his cock darkening until it was almost maroon at the base.  A whine came out of his mouth, surprising both of them, judging from the expression that flashed across his face:  his eyes popped open, his mouth forming an O, and he looked over at Tony in shock and— vulnerability?  

_Fuck!_

Suddenly, Tony knew _exactly_ what would break the wave they were currently riding.  He met Steve’s eyes in a silent stare as Steve’s fists clenched and released, clenched and released, choking little breaths shaking his shoulders.  He reached up with one hand, snapping his fingers in front of his own nose to get Steve’s attention on it, and then, slowly, letting his eyes roam over the sinful picture Steve was presenting, reached down.  

Still moving slowly, deliberately, he grasped firmly, adjusting himself again because _god damn this was painful,_ and then, licking his lips, he flicked open the button at the top of his jeans.

Steve groaned, a long, full-chested note which slid like a landslide, just at the end, towards a more needy moan.  He shot, hips jerking convulsively up, hands still clenched, white-knuckled, at his sides, eyes shut tight but mouth dropping open, the long tendons in his neck as tight as bridge-supports, almost thrashing with the release of tension.  He came in two thick pulses, the first shooting beyond the white trail of the first orgasm, the second falling fall short of it, pooling into his bellybutton with a slide that was probably ticklish.

The ejaculate, Tony couldn’t help but notice, didn’t seem noticeably depleted in volume from the last time, although he was eyeballing it and not measuring.  

When he was done— and Tony was under no illusions that Steve was _completely_ done; it was obviously only a temporary respite— his breathing trailed off, going from the gasping, puffing pants to hitching, almost sobbing breaths, slower but no less intense.  He stopped meeting Tony’s eyes, too, and for a moment, Tony wondered if maybe Steve was having second thoughts— maybe regretting being there with him.  

He didn’t actually decide to stand up; he was just suddenly on his feet, moving closer to Steve.  He pulled the wipes from the side table, holding it up wordlessly with a tilt of his eyebrows asking Steve if he wanted it.  

Steve nodded, not looking at him— he was focusing on the camera on the opposing table, a blush starting to stain his cheeks— and Tony reached into his back pocket and whipped out a sharpie, too, tracing the outlines of the streaks on Steve’s pecs and abs.

Steve looked over at him in shock.

“For comparison,” Tony explained, keeping his voice light, disinterested, so that Steve could process at his own pace.  “Generally speaking, shot distance is a good indicator of pressure.”  In weapons design, too, although Tony rather thought that as weapons go, Steve was the best one any Stark would ever make.  “Let’s give the marker a moment to dry, then we’ll wipe those away.”

Steve’s expression sharpened.  “You don’t think we’re done,” he said— asked, really.  Confirmed.  

Tony met his eyes squarely, and let just the hint of a smirk play around his mouth.  “Steve...  I don’t think we are anywhere _close_ to done.”

Then he let the look turn impatient, raising an eyebrow at Steve.  “What, do _you_ think we’re done?”

Steve blushed again, cheeks bright red, brilliant streaks of it chasing down his throat and showing up on his chest as patches of cheerful pink.  “No,” he admitted.  “Most people would be, though.  It’s kind of...”  His eyes clouded, and he cut his gaze away.  

Tony’s smirk had come all the way out of its closet, now, hanging out on his face in broad daylight, making wolf-whistles at Steve from the corner.  “What kind of a scientist would I be, if I were only using part of the data?” he asked, deliberately careless.  “Hold still, now.”  

He was going to have to standardize the weight of these wipes later.  In the meantime, he carefully mopped up the number two sample first, edging around the original, and then saved the wipe, only going after the first batch of ejaculate once he had a clear shot at it.

Steve’s blush didn’t exactly abate while he did it, which wasn’t exactly a surprise; what _was_ a surprise— although, Tony supposed, it shouldn’t have been— was that Steve started hardening, _again,_ at the touch of Tony’s hand on his stomach.

“Hmm...” Tony said, studying him.  “Alright, let’s try this...”  He picked up Steve’s hand, the right one, lining his fingers up with Steve’s briefly, almost as if he were about to hold hands with him. There was heat coming off of Steve’s palm— and of course there was, Steve ran about five thousand degrees all the time, and that was without being aroused— but still, it felt like it was burning, searing into Tony’s hand.  Tony still wanted to link them together, though, still wanted to wind his fingers with Steve’s like they were highschool sweethearts, going to prom or eating a picnic or something...

He let go of Steve's hand with a jerk and whipped around to grab him by the wrist, instead, pulling the hand down until he could squirt a generous portion of the lube— the same stuff he had used around the arc reactor, once upon a time— into Steve’s palm.  He closed Steve’s fingers around it, then pushed until Steve’s loose fist was positioned over his stomach.  A tiny drop of the lube escaped his grasp, descending to land on his abs like a spider dropping down on a line of silk.  

Tony gulped and said a silent prayer for self-control, stepping away and around the end of the chair.  “I’ll just be—”  He waved vaguely.  “ — over here.  Watching.  Don’t worry, I’m still watching— _observing!_  Better term, _observing—_ the... proceedings.  I’ll keep an eye on you, you just...”  He stared, he was staring, he couldn’t _help_ it— “Just go ahead and—”  There was a gesture, there; it looked a lot like strangling a kielbasa.  “ — you go on ahead,” he repeated.  

Then he blew out a quick breath and dropped onto his rolly-stool like he had just run the 400 meter sprint.

Steve swallowed and looked away from him, not meeting his eyes.  Slowly, tentatively, his hand— another bead of lube leaked off of it— reached for his dick.  He rubbed his fingers together as he moved, clenching and then rubbing again, spreading the lubricant over them; Tony found himself breathing heavy, and worked to get himself under control.

The first touch of his own hand brought a moan out of Steve, a needy sort of noise which was immediately followed by a firm slide of his glistening palm against the length.  He rubbed, up and down, fingers spread wide, for a moment, and if Tony ignored reality he could almost imagine that Steve was showing off for him, that Steve _wanted_ him to look, to watch as Steve slowly closed his fingers around himself.  

He jerked himself slowly, at first— Tony made a mental note to ask about overstimulation following the previous orgasms— a long, drawn-out slide up, followed by a smooth, sensuous slide down, like there was some kind of air-buffered shock absorber slowing his pace.  After the first two strokes, though, he breathed out harshly, then grunted, and picked up, a still subdued but brisk up-down, up-down, and Tony found after a minute that it was exactly the same speed as his own respiration; he must have subconsciously fallen into the same rate, moving with Steve even though he was still on the stool and wasn’t actually moving.

Steve picked up a little when Tony’s breath caught— an inevitable result of his paying attention to it, definitely nothing more— and then he was actually pumping, working himself towards the edge again.  After a moment, he gave a sort of spasming flail, jerking his hand off his dick and frantically pumping more lube into it, then rubbing it together with the other hand before putting both of them back on his junk.  He continued jerking himself with the right, focusing more and more on the sensitive spot just underneath the head— Tony memorized, for no reason whatsoever, how much he seemed to like it— while the other hand throttled himself at the base, squeezing not enough to be painful, but enough that he would feel the pressure, the goodness, so tight—

He came in one stream, this time, and it didn’t arch quite as high.  The top of it still cleared the umbilicus, though, so Tony figured they had at least two more cycles to go.  

Not too shabby, really.  He supposed he could deal.

Steve threw his head back when he came, not looking at what he was doing; now, he kept it back, tilted up towards the ceiling.  Tony waited for a long, uncomfortable minute, but when Steve didn’t seem to come back down, he just got up wordlessly and fished the sharpie out of his back pocket again.  

Steve’s eyes were closed, but they opened at the touch of the marker on his skin.  He looked desolate, lonely and uncomfortable; this had to be awkward for him, the big lug, so used to being in control of situations and realizing that he wasn’t even in control of his own body...  Tony felt a little badly about it, until he remembered that Steve had had three orgasms in the last half hour and he was going to have at least two more in the next one. 

“Chill,” Tony ordered when Steve reached for the wipes.  “First of all, the marker hasn’t dried yet, and second of all, I have a _procedure_ for this, we are going to be _careful_ here.”  He grinned.  “In the name of science, Steve.”  

Steve huffed out a puff of air through his nose and looked away, but Tony still caught the smile hiding in the corner of his mouth.  

“You know, it’s really extraordinary— well, you do, actually.  Know that.  I know you do.  But seriously; this—”  He waved inelegantly at Steve’s crotch.  “ — it’s probably annoying, right?  You get sick of it... _popping up,_ at inopportune times?  Sick of it getting in your way?  Just done with the way it saps your attention, distracts you, preys on your mind...?”

Steve looked a little shamefaced, but nodded.  His skin looked pale in the sickly lights of the lab, but Tony knew it was an illusion.  He resolved to swap out the fluorescents for full-spectrum bulbs— Pepper had suggested he do it months ago, he had just never gotten around to it.

“Yeah,” Tony said, tapping his hand in a drum-beat on the edge of his stool.  “But the thing is, it really is a gift.  I mean, I know it doesn’t seem that way to you, but... the things you can do?   _No one_ should be able to do them.  And if we can figure out why it works for you when it doesn’t work for anybody else, we can use it.  We can find a way to make it happen.  

“What we’re doing, right now?  It might seem ridiculous.  But someday, there’s gonna be a guy who could never get it up before, for whom Viagra doesn’t work and none of the other tricks does either, but what we’re doing now, here, will reveal something about it, and— and he’s gonna get his first erection in a decade, and he’s going to go share it with his wife.”  

He shrugged and looked away, giving Steve a minute of space to recover without observation.  Other than the camera.  

“Science matters.  It always matters, even when it seems dumb it matters.  So, you know.  Thank you.  For coming to me, I mean.”  He cut a glance back at Steve, and upon seeing the increased comfort in Steve’s shoulder, the relaxation in his back and the small smile toying at his mouth, he smirked.  “No pun intended,” he added belatedly.

Steve chuckled, and then shifted:  he had started to thicken once again.  

 

* * *

 

_Six.  Times._

Six times, Steve had come for him, thrusting and gasping into his own fist.  

After the third, his recovery had started to slow; the first time, he hadn’t even gone fully flaccid in between, but between the fifth and the sixth there was a whole ten minutes of lull, and after the last he and Tony had agreed that was probably it for the day.  (Plus, Steve had looked _done:_ boneless and flushed and hazy-eyed, and Tony knew he probably shouldn’t but he definitely _was going to_ make that image into the background on his phone, because _holy shit!)_

The fourth time, Steve had worked himself slowly, climbing on top of the sensations like it was a precarious pile of rocks, only to come suddenly, explosively, hurtling off the cliff on the other side, as soon as Tony had touched him.  He hadn’t even touched him _there,_ just had put his fingers— index and middle of his right hand— on the pulse point at Steve’s neck, maneuvering carefully to keep clear of the EKG cables snaking back over Steve’s shoulders.  Steve had bucked up under his arm, arching his neck and spine until he formed a perfect, drawn-bow shape, from the top of his skull to where the backs of his thighs started to climb off the chair.  He shouted aloud, that time, a harsh, wordless vowel, and then collapsed, totally spent....

...for the next five minutes.  

Tony made small talk while they waited, only not— not exactly small-talk, that was.  He talked about the Avengers’ most recent mission, about the way they had worked together well in the fight, about how they had communicated well and worked seamlessly as a team—

— and all of a sudden, there he went again, and this time, Tony hadn’t _stopped_ talking, had just kept going on about how Steve always found a way to mesh his talents with the other people on the team, whether it was letting Nat take the lead on covert ops even as he planned assaults, or the way he cleared the ground while Sam worked the skies, or even the way he worked with Tony himself, always in step, always on the same page, leapfrogging through battles and relying on each other, _trusting_ each other—

Steve was panting, now, and Tony didn’t hesitate, reaching for the lube and slicking up, wrapping his hand around Steve’s cock firmly, stroking steadily, and not too slow, keeping up, keeping the momentum going.  He talked in Steve’s ear, about the team, about the future, about science, mostly babbling to give him some kind of background noise, and all the time he kept moving, kept stroking, slowly winding Steve up and up again.

“ — and I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to throwing this data into a spreadsheet,” he said cheerfully against Steve’s ear, “just to play around with the numbers, see what they tell us.  There are one, two, three, four, five, six variables that I can see, here— it’s going to make the meta-analysis one heck of a _mess,_ unless we replicate— hold the base,” Tony interrupted himself.  

Steve groaned, and panted, but he obediently throttled his cock, gripping the base firmly in his right hand, the left reaching down to put pressure below his balls— _Jesus god_ Tony was glad there was a camera that was angled to catch that— even as Tony moved his hand towards the head, shortening his strokes, focusing in on that sensitive spot on the underside just the same way Steve had last time—

— and Steve obviously _recognized_ it, because he stared down at the sight— one hell of a sight— of Tony’s hand gripping his cock, then whipped his head to the side to stare into Tony’s eyes from only inches away.  His red, self-bitten mouth dropped open, gasping, _gasping_ under Tony’s hand, and then he made an abortive movement towards Tony, one that couldn’t be what it looked like, because what it had looked like was that he was going to kiss him.

And then he jerked back, and cried out, sounding almost like he was in pain, and curled up as orgasm #5 pounded through his body, jerking in— or rather, _under,_ not _in, in_ would imply some kind of relationship— _under_ Tony’s arms.  

Arm.  Singular.  The other one was braced on the back of the chair; it didn’t count.

“Nice,” Tony said, but his voice came out completely hollow, so he cleared his throat and tried again.  “Nicely done,” he said, more normally this time.  He noticed his hand shaking as he pulled it away from Steve and reached back towards himself for the sharpie; he made a mental note to get them both smoothies when this was done, they were obviously running short on calories.  

Steve was shivering, too, as Tony said in his ear, tracing the liquid on his stomach in black ink, “You’re doing really well for me here, Steve, this performance is absolutely amazing.  I think you can probably do one more—”  Steve shuddered, probably at the heavy overstimulation, but nodded.  “ — and I’d really like you to, if you can; it would really help the results, having as much data as possible.  Do you know about this?  For n=1, no conclusions can be drawn, and n=2 isn’t much better, but we’re going for n=6 with this next one, that should be enough to at least get a trend, especially considering how many variables we’re measuring...”

Tony cleared his stomach with a fresh wipe, then settled in to stay where he was, leaning his weight on the chair:  Steve was probably going to need him to stroke him through the next one, too, since an increasing vector of stimulation had been established, going from nothing, to Steve’s hand, to his.  

He rubbed Steve’s skin firmly as he kept up his soothing babble, first down along his stomach, then further down, over the notches of his hips, working his way inward, towards the inner thigh.  Steve’s breath began hitching, and he started to sit up, but Tony told him to “Lie down, Steve, just relax and enjoy the sensation” with his mouth less than an inch from Steve’s ear, and suddenly Steve’s arms were shooting out from under him and he was collapsing back down in the chair, eyes wide and staring as Tony rubbed up towards his balls.

“Yeah, that’s good, Steve, just like that.  Just relax, let me take over this one, let me do this for you...”  Slowly, he moved the circles he was rubbing upward, pressing in behind Steve’s balls, putting indirect pressure on the prostate.  Steve gasped, and gasped again as Tony pushed it, then relaxed as he trailed his hand up, grasping Steve’s length by the base and stroking a tiny line upward with his thumb.

Slowly, he pulled his hand back, collecting a few pumps of lube and droozling them over Steve’s straining hard-on.  “That’s it,” he breathed, “easy...”  

He began to stroke.  

Steve’s breath emerged more in whimpers than in pants, by this time, the vulnerable noises of a man who was far too sensitive for the treatment he was currently receiving.  Tony made sure to keep his grip firm, not delicate; the lighter touch, now, would be more painful than the harder.  He moved apace, urging Steve on towards orgasm, even knowing that, given the events of the last hour, there was no way Seve would be able to come in less than five minutes.  The only sounds in the lab were the noises they were making:  Steve’s needy, desperate sex noises, the slap of skin against skin, the wet noises of the lube around Tony’s hand...  and the low, soothing murmur Tony continued to put out, urging Steve to “Go on, Steve, that’s it, just like that, enjoy it, feel my hand, feel me fuck you...”

Steve moaned, loudly, and Tony tightened his grip and moved faster.

“That’s right, perfect— just perfect— come on, you can do it.  One more for me Steve, and then we’ll call it a day, I promise.  I just want to see you shoot off one more time for me, give me that good data Steve, just once more, and then I can wrap you in a blanket and keep you warm.  Maybe find you something to eat— are you hungry?  Hot chocolate?  Eclair?”  His hand was all but bouncing around Steve’s cock, now, and he tightened his grip again— Steve moaned loudly— and twisted, just a little, to catch that so-sensitive spot which had worked so well before.  

Steve made a sound— a gut-punched sound, a sound like he couldn’t quite catch his breath— and flailed, his hands grasping the edges of the chair and clenching.  He jerked once, twice, and then a third time, as if he had been defibrillated, and then shouted wordlessly.  

He came in an ooze this time, the fluid fountaining over Tony’s hand like lava, burning and searing its way into Tony’s memory.  His shoulders shook like a tree in a hurricane, and Tony pulled his hand away as quickly as possible because after _six rounds_ in _one hour,_ Steve probably didn’t need Tony or anybody else touching his still-red, probably-painful junk.  

Then Tony hurriedly put his hand back on Steve, albeit in a different location— on his chest, pushing him down into the chair— because Steve was crying, silently, tears leaking out to stream down his face.

“Hey, hey— what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”  Steve gasped, but shook his head, and while his eyes were watery when he raised the to Tony’s, they were also clear and open.  “Nothing, it’s just... a lot.”  

Tony breathed a bit easier.  “Okay...  Here we go, then...”

He dug out an old blanket from back when he used to sleep in the lab, wrapping it around Steve’s shoulders; he pulled the EKG leads off the other man and guided him into standing, demonstrating all the marks on his stomach for the camera with a tape measure held next to it for scale, then steered him towards the kitchen, extracting a promise from him that he was going to ingest at least a thousand Calories in the next hour.  “Smoothies are great!” Tony called after him.

“You and your smoothies,” he called back, voice only a little bit shaky.  “Oh, hey— Tony?”

“Yeah, Cap.”

“Will you, uh...  You are going to send me a copy of your results, right?”

“Of course,” Tony said.  He was kind of surprised, to be honest— it hadn’t seemed like the sort of thing Steve would be interested in— but he supposed it made sense.  ‘In fact— Friday?  Copy the good Captain on all relevant data sets from here on out.”  

Steve’s smile was a little more solid, this time.  “Thanks, Tony,” he said, then turned and walked towards the kitchen again.

Tony let his smile stay until Steve had rounded the corner, then dropped the pose of nonchalance and turned back to the lab, making his way to the chair.  He reached out and tentatively touched the line of six wipes that were set on the side tray, then brushed his fingers over the dents in the leather where Steve’s fingers had gripped at the end.  

His dick was achingly hard.

Before he even knew what he was doing, he was shoving his pants down, boxers and all, bracing one hand on the upper part of the chair and swiping the other around the pump-bottle of lube.  Now slick and slippery with the neo-organic mix, he ran two fingers along himself, shuddering at the intensity of a first touch which came when he was already so aroused.  

“Fuck,” he said, voice cracking in the middle.  “God— fucking _damnit—”_

It didn’t take long.  One slippery hand wrapped around himself, a few no-nonsense strokes, and he was coming, exploding over the still-warm leather of the chair Steve had so recently occupied.

Hands and knees both shaking too much to support him, Tony tumbled to the floor, staring out at the lab sightlessly, the high-pitched whine of post-orgasmic brainlessness sounding in his ears.

...Yeah, there was absolutely no pretending to himself that all that was _even a little bit_ about science.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is eleven thousand words of porn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you Valmasy and Buhfly for betaing.

* * *

 

Literally everyone knew, which Tony found himself completely unbothered by.  

In fact, he seemed to be the only one who _wasn’t_ bothered by it:  Natasha gave him a disgusted look, Wanda increased her avoidance of him from 70% of the time to 98%, and Clint sent him an e-card (seriously, Clint?) with cartoons of childish hand-gestures and a reproving gif of Bill Cosby shaking his head at him.  Which Tony thought was _particularly_ unfair considering that it was _Bill Cosby;_ when a guy has had rape charges brought, you didn’t still hold him up as an exemplar, in Tony’s opinion _._

Their reaction rankled, more than Tony would have expected.  “I’m not _actually_ the devil,” he complained to Rhodey the next weekend, when they met for their Annual Christmas Snuggle-fest.  “I did not _seduce the innocent virgin,_ here.  Rogers came to _me,_ but somehow _I’m_ the one who’s catching shit for it?”

Rhodey poked him in the neck and resettled him more comfortably against his Ugly Christmas Sweater.  He said, “Please stop talking over _Die Hard.”_

Tony supposed that was fair.

In the end, though, it was all okay, because the only person who _wasn’t_ mad at Tony about it was the only one who mattered:   _Steve_ seemed to think it was just fine.  

It came to a head one day at lunch.  Dinner was always an uncertain affair—everyone’s schedules were different—and breakfast was a total dog-eat-dog, every-man-for-himself sort of thing, but everybody was at lunch at least vaguely at the same time.  The end result was that, even if they weren’t eating together, they still _ate_ together.  

Nat was eating sushi and reading on a tablet.  She was clad in short shorts and a tank top, her hair curling carefree around her cheeks, sitting in a stool at the counter, her bare feet kicked out of flip-flops that sat on the tiled kitchen floor.  Steve was making what he probably would not call a Dagwood.  Steve almost always did sandwiches for lunch—grilled cheese day was a _great day—_ and somehow, even when it was just meat, cheese and vegetables on a bun, he always managed to make the cooking take longer than the eating.  So seeing him standing at the counter, methodically lining up cucumbers on a stack of pastrami, was not exactly an unusual sight.  

Tony entered in search of coffee.  Also sustenance, but seriously, coffee was the higher priority.  

Nat looked up from her tablet, a sly tilt of her eyelashes in his direction.  “Careful, Stark.”  She swiped right on something— _probably_ not actually Tindr.  “Rogers is making a footlong; you don’t want to get ideas.”

At the counter, Steve stiffened, the cucumbers moving more slowly.  

Tony shot Nat a bitchface.  "I always have ideas; I'm the idea man, it's what I do."  He let a beat of silence fill in while he prepared his innocent face, watching Steve start layering tomatoes out of the corner of his eye.  "Why, what ideas did you mean?" he asked as if he didn’t know.

Nat’s eyebrow twitched, and she swiped right again; maybe it _was_ Tindr.  “Well, don’t tell me you didn’t measure it,” she said, her voice as mild as a San Francisco summer.  

Tony suddenly, _desperately_ needed coffee, needed it like _fire,_ needed it like the it was the cure for the headache exploding behind his eyes.  Because _actually,_ he realized as he stared at the table, he _hadn’t_ measured... it.   _The_ it.  The only _it_ in the room at all likely to be twelve inches long.

(Not that it was actually twelve inches long.  It was about... eight.  He was pretty sure it was eight.  Plus or minus twelve percent.)  

He had measured other things, sure; but the actual length would vary, of course, with different levels of arousal, as would the girth, and he had frankly always considered that a bit of pathetic, chauvinistic nonsense _anyway..._

 _..._ but on the other hand:   _he hadn’t measured it!_ And he _could have!_  

That was just a missed opportunity, was what that was.  

“Well,” he told Natasha, strangely breathless and sad, “I don’t really have a _before_ to compare it to—oddly enough, my dad seems to have had a lot less interest in Steve’s dick than I do—”

“And who can blame you?” she asked silkily.

“That’s enough.”

They both looked at Steve.  

Steve was standing with his weight evenly distributed on the balls of his feet, arms crossed over his chest in Disapproving Dad mode.  “Natasha—I appreciate your optimism, but this wasn’t why I told you about that.  I think we can probably save the size jokes for the sandwiches,” he said.  “And Tony...”

He met Tony’s eyes squarely, lips kicking up in a smirk in spite of the blush creeping over his ears and cheeks.  His voice was firm with only a trace of embarrassment when he said, “Anytime you want to get out the measuring tape... you just let me know.”  

Natasha’s bare feet curled around the base of her stool like a smile.

 

* * *

 

For some reason, Tony found himself in a good mood that afternoon, sliding into his workshop already jamming out to a beat only he could hear.  “FRIDAY, start me some Hendrix, would you?  And pull up the specs on the TI-80-WTFE project, we can get that sent to the distributors by next week, I bet.”

“Sure thing, Boss!  Should I tell you what progress I’ve made on the Ongoing Projects list?”

“Yeah, sounds great; makes for good background noise, anyway.”  

FRIDAY never yelled at him for being rude, even when he deserved it.  

“Still running simulations for reinforcement matrices.  For the War Machine armor?  I’m through 63% of the possibilities, and so far I haven’t found anything that will improve buffering _and_ provide insulation improvements.”

Tony twitched his goatee.  “Keep trying.  Gotta be _something_ that’ll work better than what we have now.”

“The War Machine armor _is_ currently state-of-the-art—”

“Of course it is, I built it.  Did you not hear me?  Keep trying.  I want this to surprise the hell out of the next asshole who thinks they can taze-whip my sourpatch.  Next!”

“Heaven forbid anyone touch your sourpatch,” FRIDAY said with a passable imitation of sarcasm.  “Next is the phone update, the Slique?”

Tony winced.   _“Really_ need a better name for that,” he muttered, then added more loudly, “It’’s pronounced _sleek—”_

“Slique—”  

—which she pronounced like _slick,_ damn it—

“—battery packs are still not holding the charge you want them to; I’ve started running a series of efficiency algorithms to see if we can fix it on the other end.”

“Seriously?  Nobody’s making a better battery?”  He wasn’t even mad about it; just tired.  What, were they _happy_ with mediocrity?!  

“Lithium ion _is_ considered the competitive standard in the field, boss.”

Tony grimaced.  “Start a sub-file for battery design; you find something relevant, tuck it in there, and I’ll pull it out sometime later, when it’s become more interesting than cat videos.”

“I don’t know, boss...  I wasn’t sure anything could be more interesting than cat videos.”

Tony looked down at the workbench to hide the way he smiled at that, his eyes feeling wrinkled and cracked at the corners. _Like my soul,_ he thought, and then snorted.  “Okay, sass-ter.  Moving on.”

“Background statistic analysis of the interlude with Captain Rogers should finish running in about thirty minutes, boss.”

“Took long enough.”  Tony picked up a wrench and poked at the tentative design for the TI-80-WTFE; the holographic datapad spun like a debutante, showing off its curves for him before lifting up its dress—okay, coverplate—to reveal the goods.  

“You _did_ say I should devote a limited amount of processing power to it,” FRIDAY reminded him.

“Yeah, yeah—what does Rogers think?”  The datapad had plenty of space for the operations, it was the programming that was going to suck, but Tony still wanted to see if he could upgrade the RAM.  Maybe make it easy to mod, as an easter egg?

“Captain Rogers has not yet viewed the material.”  FRIDAY did not have a body, and therefore _could not possibly_ be blushing, but she sure sounded like she was doing it anyway as she added, “He indicated that he would prefer to wait until my analysis was complete.”  

“Huh!”  Of course, if you opened the design to modders, you opened it to copycats... Tony poked around the holograph, trying to find a way around the problem, only listening to FRIDAY with half his mind.  “Well, I guess he and I have that much in common...  I haven’t looked yet, either.”  

“I’m sure the two of you are more alike than you think,” FRIDAY said demurely.  “Speaking of—”

She went on, listing projects and statuses, but Tony was paying even less attention than he had been before.  He kept thinking about Steve’s face in the kitchen, blushing and smiling. _“Anytime you want to get out the measuring tape... you just let me know.”_

It almost sounded like he was game for a repeat.  

 _More data_ would _make the analysis more accurate..._

Really, was there any other way to interpret that comment?  Not to mention the way Steve had said it, as if he had had to work himself up to it, just a little bit, in order to get it out...

_“Anytime you want to get out the measuring tape... you just let me know...”_

“You alright there, Boss?”

“Huhwhat?”  Tony jerked himself out of his thoughts, checking in on what he’d been doing.  

Oh, good, nothing was broken or plotting world domination.

“What was that, FRIDAY?”  

“You were smiling.”

Tony blinked at the holographic TI-80-WTFE, then blinked some more, rapidly, tapping his fingers on the table.  “You know what?  Fuck it,” he decided.  “See how much of this stuff they’ll let me put out as Freeware, that way there’s no money in copycats.  Oh, and FRIDAY?”

“Yes, Boss?”

“Send Rogers an invitation.  Tell him to meet me down here around...  Let’s call it ten, tomorrow night.”  That would give Tony time to make some _experimental preparations._ “And tell him to bring a ruler.”

FRIDAY paused incrementally.  “Yes, Boss,” she said, her tone completely devoid of judgement, which...  Huh.  FRIDAY wasn’t supposed to be programmed to make those kinds of judgements, would he need to run a debugging to check for malware?  Because FRIDAY’s system was custom, debugging took for-fucking- _ever—_

There was another, longer pause, and then she added, sounding heated, “There are approximately fourteen different devices present in the workshop capable of measuring length, Boss; I’m not sure why you’ve decided they’re inadequate, but I _assure_ you—”

Tony resisted the urge to bang his head on the table.  “That’s enough, FRIDAY.”

“I am more than capable of making any measurements you need, and you’ve never doubted my accuracy before—”

“That’s _enough,_ FRIDAY!”

 

* * *

 

Steve actually knocked this time.  Steve was generally polite, to a point, but he wasn’t a big one for knocking at Tony’s door; he tended to just barge in, possibly suspecting—correctly—that, given the choice, Tony would exclude him from the workshop.  Too many breakables, too many risks associated with letting Steve into his sanctum.  

This time, though, Tony had basically told Steve he would let him in, so he guessed Steve thought it was a sure enough bet to knock.

Steve entered the workshop one body-part at a time.  First, he stuck his head around the door, eyes seeking out Tony where he sat at the first workbench.  (The workshop had three; the other two were set against each side of the back wall, while this one was right smack dab in front of the door, and therefore the only one visible from the main entrance.)  When he spotted Tony Steve gave a funny little nod like he was making some sort of a pact, then eased his massive chest into the room, too.  

He wasn’t wearing the suit this time, Tony noticed.  He was wearing a t-shirt that clung to his pecs and abs like it had been vacuum-sealed into place.  

His arms followed, bracing against the sides of the door as if he had to push himself into the room like a child clawing its way out of a vagina.  His legs and feet came last, kicking him into the room like he was kicking himself free of restraints.

He was wearing jeans.  They were dark, a navy so dark it was almost black, and they were pretty damn vacuum-sealed, too.

And crocs.  

Tony stared.  “Who even _gave_ you those?” he blurted, looking up at Steve in horror.

“Aren’t they nice?” Steve asked, pleased.  “Natasha did.  It’s kind of—well, it’s kind of a joke,” he explained earnestly.  “Back when we were on the run from Hydra—”

And why was that a sentence he could use so casually, like he’d said _last weekend when we went to the Publix?_

“—Nat had me in these gym shoes that were a size and a half too big, and I complained about it.  So now she sends me all these awful shoes, like _flip flops—”_

He said it like Nat was sending him _arsenic._

“—and I wear them because it makes her smile.”  

Steve beamed.  

Tony squinted at him.  “I feel like it might not be a _nice_ smile.”

Steve shrugged.  “She lets me see her doing it,” he pointed out, “that’s pretty nice for Natasha.”

“True.”  

“And at least I’m wearing shoes at all.”  Steve nodded to Tony’s feet, which were bare against the bottom rung of his workstation stool.  “Isn’t that some kind of safety violation?”

“My workshop, my rules,” Tony said breezily.  “I’m not working with any chemicals today.”  Not that there weren’t occasionally acid powders scattered on the ground in here, but Dum-E swept pretty regularly.  He was sure it would be fine.

Steve nodded again, crossing his arms.  Then he hastily uncrossed them again and stuck his hands in his pockets.  He looked like he was maybe reconsidering that move, too, but he opted to stick it out, leaning against the now-closed workshop door.  His gaze skittered around the workshop nervously, touching on one project then another, obviously wondering what all he was looking at.  

Then he spotted the chair they had used the last time.  He went abruptly still.

“Tony...”  His voice squeaked, and he hurriedly coughed to clear his throat before trying again.  “Tony, what are those?”

“Stirrups,” Tony said casually.  “I want you to know I had to make them, by the way; the typical medical stirrups are basically manufactured to carry, at the most, a pregnant woman straining against contractions, there was no way they were gonna hold you.”

Steve said, “Grrrk!”, possibly picturing the potential for stabbing himself in the calf if the stirrups shattered under his legs.

“So I made the stirrups, and then I reinforced the chair, and now it’s bolted to the ground, and I could probably balance a tank on those things and not have it go anywhere.  So.”  Tony carefully put down the implement he’d been playing with, a short-pronged cattle prod merged with a fountain pen.  “That’s a thing.  If you wanted it to be.”

Steve looked back at him, meeting his eyes and firming up his jaw like he was about to make a speech about freedom.  “You said to bring my ruler,” he murmured.

“Yeah.”  Tony tapped his fingers against his legs.  “Turns out I actually have plenty of rulers.  You really only needed to bring yourself.”

Steve took a deep breath and let it out, then took another deep breath and let it out again.  “Tony, what are we doing?”

“Currently?”  Tony tapped his fingers against his thigh again, and chickened the fuck out.  “Talking to each other from twelve feet away, which—why?  Is there some reason you aren’t coming over here?”  He faked concern.  “Do I have cooties?”  He gasped.  “Is there a _smell?”_

Steve made an impatient sound and crossed the room fast, getting into Tony’s space in a breathtakingly short amount of time.  He hadn’t even been running; his legs were just _that long._

He stopped about six inches away— _too close!_ Tony’s brain screamed—and leaned in, putting one hand on the desk on either side of Tony.  “What.  Are.  We doing?” he repeated.  

His mouth was very pink, and very close.  Tony tried to look away from it, and found he couldn’t quite seem to manage it.  

He swallowed.  “Ostensibly?  Science,” he bluffed weakly.  “But...”

He could _smell_ Steve, he realized.  Warm skin and the faint overly-green scent of some kind of shower gel, and a little bit of a salty scent which was just...  

“That’s an excuse,” Steve said.

Tony shrugged.  “Duh.”

Steve stood up straight again, his hands falling back to swing limply beside his hips.  He didn’t say anything.  

“Doesn’t mean I don’t actually wanna know how big your dick is,” Tony pointed out into the awkward silence.  “Just... maybe not the only reason I like to watch you go crazy.”

Steve’s eyes widened, and he took a half-step back.  He was giving Tony space to breathe, but Tony found he didn’t much appreciate it.  

“I’m not...”  Steve’s fist clenched at his sides, then flexed.  “I’m not sure...”

“Sure,” Tony said easily.  “No pressure.” 

He paused, watching Steve carefully.  

“I’d love to bring you off again,” he said.  He kept his voice even and mellow, a good-sized space for Steve to curl up in if he chose.  “Seemed like you had an okay time before, right?  Let’s do it again.  You can have orgasm after orgasm—after orgasm—over and over again, pleasure cresting through your body like a wave, leaving you helpless and shaking in a chair I specifically designed to hold you open, available to my view and my camera... and I can get...”

He paused suggestively, watching Steve subconsciously lean towards him.  Steve’s eyes had darkened, the pupils visibly widening as Tony’s words hit him until only a faint rim of blue remained around them.

“...data,” Tony finished smoothly.  “I can get data.”

Steve swallowed, licking his lips.  He looked at the chair thoughtfully, watching the light shine on the kevlar-like fabric of the stirrups.  Then he looked back at Tony, and when he spoke, his voice was rough and hoarse:  

“If you play your cards right, you can get more than that.”

Tony grinned triumphantly, picking up the mini-prod to point at Steve with it.  “Take your pants off,” he ordered, “and also, please, for the love of God, leave the crocs at the door.”  He slapped the poker down on the workbench and led the way towards the chair.

“What, don’t want me comfortable this time?”

Tony snorted. _“Thought ahead_ this time.  I raised the temperature in here five degrees, starting fifteen minutes ago.”  He hit the warm overhead light and turned on the monitors around them as Steve pulled off his sinfully tight t-shirt and peeled down his jeans.  

Steve got his first good look at the setup, and his actions slowed, then stopped in mid-strip, bent over at the waist with his pants and underwear tangled around his knees.  Beneath the curve of Steve’s chest, Tony could just make out that Steve was already thickening to hardness.  “Uh,” he said, “that’s, uh, a lot of machines...  Tony?”

Tony patted the chair invitingly to hurry Steve along.  “Don’t worry, Cap; you can handle it.  This one—” he pointed.  “Monitors your heart—I used to use it all the time while I was working here, just pulled it out of storage for this—”

 _Storage_ meant the cluttered area two-thirds of the way down the room where machines were piled haphazardly on top of other machines, but Steve didn’t have to know that.

“—that one’s a medical monitor, like you’d get in the hospital, except it doesn’t need the EKG leads because we have this first one, which—”  He showed Steve the red wires running from one to the other.  “This guy, here, is just a camera—it’s a fancier camera than I was using before, that’s why it’s so big—”

“I wasn’t thinking about how big it was,” Steve said dryly, stepping out of his pants and clambering up onto the leather padding.

Tony frowned.  “It’s plenty big,” he said defensively.

“I _really_ wasn’t thinking about how big _that_ was.”

“It’s big enough!  Stop thinking about it!  Put your feet in the stirrups!”

Steve grinned at him.  “Sure,” he said, slipping his feet through the long tunnels of high-tech fabric.  His erection, already thick and leaking, bobbed with the movement.  

“Okay, so these,” Tony said seriously. He rested a hand on a stirrup where it covered Steve’s shin, and Steve twitched at the light touch.  “These are the same basic design as the ones you’d get in a surgical room, only I’ve made them out of materials you’re less likely to break.  You still _can...”_ He leaned around Steve’s leg to look at him seriously.  “I need you to know that you _can_ break these stirrups; they’re still just fabric, it’s only the supports that are reinforced.  But it’s solid stuff; you’ll have to work for it.”  

Steve nodded, looking equally serious.  “Okay,” he said gravely.

Tony grinned nervously.  “Great!” he said.  “In which case, there are just a couple measurements I forgot to take, and also I wanted to go ahead and put a grid on you to make it easier to measure distance on ejaculate.”

“A what?”

“A grid.  Just paint it on—body paint; it’ll wash off in the shower.”  He pulled out the paper—it was a firm, posterboard sort of paper, and as he’d indicated, dashed lines punctured through it at two centimeter intervals to form a checkered pattern.  Tony waited for Steve to get settled, then arranged it carefully so that the lines ran square on the planes of his body.  “Hold this.”

Then he got out the paint.  It came in a can—commercial, but good product reviews, of course—and sprayed on.  Steve jerked when Tony first depressed the trigger, but he held the grid steady.  “You okay?” Tony asked.

“Fine,” Steve said.  He was gasping, though, like he’d gotten a shock.  “It’s cold.”

“Shit; sorry.  Nips all perked up?”  He moved the spray can steadily as he spoke, back and forth, coating the grid sheet evenly.

“Among other things,” Steve said, smiling tightly, his breath coming faster.  Tony smiled.

“I know you can bring yourself off just thinking about it, but maybe don’t, alright?  I really want to see—”

“I _might._  Not.  Have.  A _choice!”_

Tony blinked.

“You’re that close?  Already?”  He finished the spray and set the can down on the nearest flat surface behind him.  

“You have a— _shit._ You have a way with words, Tony.”  Steve had closed his eyes, and the muscles in his neck looked tight.  He was panting, now, mouth hanging slack as he focused.

“Okay!  Okay... just... give me the paper, here—”

But when Tony pulled the paint-covered sheet out of Steve grasp, it moved a gust air, sending a sharp mini-wind across the wet paint coating Steve’s torso.  

Apparently, that was all it took.  Steve thrashed, arching up in a bridge between his legs in the stirrups and his shoulders on the top part of the chair.  His cock seemed almost to pulse as he shot a thick white ooze—less distance than before, Tony noted, but he thought it might be a greater volume.  Steve sagged slightly, then tensed again, and a second wave of liquid dripped down from his red cock-head onto the fresh blue paint that crisscrossed the bottom of his abs.

“Huh,” Tony said, staring.  He blinked a couple times, snagging the small vial he had ready off a side table.  “...Yeah, that’s gonna smear.”

Steve laughed breathlessly.  “Sorry to bother you,” he said, settling back into the chair with a microwiggle.

“Not a problem, not a problem...  How do you feel about cuffs?”

“Excuse me?”  Steve stared as Tony scooped ejaculate into the vial, capped it, and set it aside.

“Cuffs.  For your hands.  Cuff your hands in front of your chest...”  Tony picked up Steve’s left wrist, then his right, moving them up in a position reminiscent of prayer to demonstrate what he meant.  “...and you won’t have as much leverage to go flailing around like that.”

Steve looked down at Tony’s hands around his wrists—Tony could see the color contrast in the bright heat of the surgical lamp, could see the way his skin glowed golden and dark compared to Steve’s more ivory tone—and licked his lips.  “I’m pretty sure,” Steve said cautiously, “that I could flail quite a bit even without bracing against my arms.”  

“Probably,” Tony admitted.  

It was possible he’d just wanted to see Steve tied up.  Hey, he could own his kinks!

Steve looked up from where he had apparently been contemplating Tony’s wrists, searching Tony’s face for... something.  Whatever it was, he apparently found it, because he gave a wry sort of half-smile and said, “Do you think I should?”  His voice lowered, hitting a pitch that made Tony’s stomach clench as he added, “Do you think it would keep me from coming?”

“I...”  Tony paused, really planning it out, thinking it over.  

He hadn’t been thinking of this, had he?  When he ordered it?  Except he must have been, despite ordering it more than five days ago, right after the first “experiment,” days before Steve indicated he might be alright having a second one.  

Well, it was here, now.  

“I think it might be a good idea, yeah.  Not just for the speed issue.  There’s a test I’d like to do...”  Tony grinned.  His heart was racing, pounding in his chest, because there was _no way_ Steve was gonna let him do this—

—except that, apparently, he might.

Only one way to find out.

“Yeah, you’re not gonna like this one.  But I’d like to know.  And it’s not gonna hurt you—or—not much, anyway.”

Steve looked alarmed.  “Uh...”

“I’ll stop if you want me to,” Tony added hastily.  “I just... uh...”

Steve coughed.  “Here,” he said, gently shaking his arm free from Tony’s grasp.  He moved his hands backwards, interlacing them behind his head instead.  “Tie them here.”

Tony stared.  

“Um.  Yes!  Yes, okay, let’s—hold on, I have to find rope—or...”  He knew exactly what he was going to use.  Five quick steps had him at a supplies cabinet, pulling out a length of tubing.  It wasn’t rubber, exactly, but a similar compound:  non-conductive and stretchy, but strong.  You had to cut the stuff, because it wouldn’t tear.

“Okay, let’s do this...”  The tubing was red—made it easier to see and untangle, while still looking cool, very important in anything Tony built—and six millimeters in diameter.  Tony made several loops around Steve’s wrist like the ones around a hangman’s knot to keep the rope—or, not-rope, he guessed—from digging in.  

When he was done, Tony carefully eased Steve’s arms back around, checking that Steve could have them in front of him in a breath if he wanted to.  The hold swung easily, and Steve was smiling as he tucked his hands back behind his head and neck again, leaning back into the chair once more.

“You realize,” he said, watching Tony sideways, “that if you have my arms tied back, you’re going to have to be the one to do all the touching of my dick?”

Tony froze, then glanced up at Steve.  “Sure,” he said, “not a problem.”  Understatement, much?  “Not really something I mind.”  

Understatement _very_ much, damn it.

Steve’s face was blank for a second, and then his mouth quirked up sideway.  “Well, I’m glad it’s not a problem,” he said seriously.  His position made his pecs, shoulders and arms stand out proud, gleaming in the bright light overhead.  

Tony squinted at him, then laughed, a huff of air passing out of him in surprise.  “Are you... _flexing_ for me?!”

“No,” Steve said quickly.  His pecs abruptly receded into a more normal-for-Steve configuration.

 _So... merely drool-inducingly hot, then._  

He tried to stare Tony down, but his eyes kept darting away to the side—a liar’s tell if ever Tony had seen one—and then flicking back upward when he remembered he was supposed to be glaring defiantly.

“Uh,” Tony said, trying not to laugh, “you know you don’t have to do that, right?”

Steve turned his head to the side, pressing his cheek into the red binding on his wrist.  “I dunno what you’re talkin’ about,” he muttered.  His nose was pink, though, and it was spreading to his cheeks.  

“Okay,” Tony said.  He smothered a grin and worked very hard at not finding Steve’s blushing adorable.  “So the actually-measuring-you thing...”

Steve had been wilting, but now he got hard again so fast it looked like a tow truck hoist; Tony half expect the ka-chink, ka-chink, ka-chunk noises.  

“Oh god,” Tony breathed, watching the visual evidence of Steve’s arousal.  He took a gulp of air and then rallied.  “Right,” he said, “uh, right.  So, actually, I spent some time thinking about this.”

“Oh, did you?”  Steve asked, eyebrow raised.  

Tony flushed.  “Yuk it up, Cap; how were you planning to go about this?  Are there specific places you measure dicks to make sure the measurements are comparable?  I mean, some have foreskins and some don’t, so that’s one problem to solve, right there.”

“Uh-huh.”

Tony took a sheet of gauze—it was actually a high-tech medical weave prepared specifically for this product, but to the untrained eye it just looked like a doughnut-shaped piece of mosquito netting—and dropped it over Steve’s cock.  The hole in the center, which Tony had cut by eyeballing the measurements, was pretty close to perfectly sized; Tony had erred on the side of too large, because he didn’t want to strangle Steve’s cock with the stuff, and because the mess wouldn’t be too bad as long as there was _something_ at the base.  “So instead of bringing out a ruler—or meter stick, in your case—”  

Steve laughed, relaxing, and Tony  pulled a cylindrical metal tube off of the crate behind his head.  He fitted it over Steve’s cock, then pulled the gauze up around it and duct-taped it to the tube so it was sealed, meaning there was now essentially a large cup with Steve’s dick poking through the bottom.  

Steve’s look of amusement changed suddenly to one of intrigued horror as he realized what exactly Tony was doing.  He let out a long, low moan which... could have been either emotion, really. _“Tony!”_

Tony grinned to himself and kept working, because that tone was appalled, yes, but it was also fascinated; horrified, but also turned on.

Yeah, this was a go.

 _“Steve,”_ he echoed, lightly mocking him as he pulled up the foam gun.  He tapped it with one fingernail, making a _tak_ sound against the aluminum siding.  “Stark Industries exclusive, right here.  We’re trying to market it to hospitals, because it sets a lot faster than the traditional methods, it’s not cold or bad-smelling—or -tasting, actually; I checked—and it’s more solid once it sets.  But it turns out the applicator is too expensive because of the helium, and it’s easier to just let people be in pain for another fifteen minutes, so the project’s in limbo and I have something like five thousand gallons of this stuff sitting in a tank out in Utah.  Cho likes it, though, so there’s that, at least.”

He started spraying it in concentric circles, sending the tip of the applicator around the base of Steve’s dick.  The seafoam-green gel started out translucent, but turned opaque as it foamed up; it came out like piped icing, and while some of it might drip onto Steve’s groin and balls, most of it stayed suspended in the netting.  

Steve had thrown his head back and was panting.  “It tingles,” he gasped.

“Mmm,” Tony agreed, finishing off the application with a swirling flourish.  “That’ll be the antiseptic properties—I swear, this stuff is going to revolutionize casts for compound fractures, if hospital administrators can get off their asses.”  He set the applicator down behind him again, then leaned on the edge of the chair and studied the way Steve was biting his lip, the way his chest was heaving.  “Problems?”

“No!”  Steve shook his head rapidly.  “No.  It’s just— _hnnn!_ It _tingles!_  And—and also... oh god, Tony, you’re making a cast of my _dick,_ and I—what’re you even going to _use_ that for?!”

Tony grinned.  He leaned over to whisper the answer to that question in Steve’s ear:  “For _whatever, whenever_ and _wherever_ I want.”  He pulled back and narrowed his eyes at the other man.  “Are you close again?”

“Oh, God.”  Steve’s voice was small, which meant yes, he _was_ teetering on the brink of orgasm again.

Tony smiled, quickly, before smothering it and moving to help.  “Always a pleasure.  Here—”  He hit the button on the side of the cast, and the electronics inside activated, temporarily softening the cast inside so that he could pull it off of Steve.  Steve jerked at the sensation, his elbows flexing as he tried to pull his hands forward, and as soon as Tony got the cast off he shifted it to one hand and scraped the nails of his other hand down the now-dry surface of Steve’s chest.  “That’s right; it’s off, you’re not going to screw the cast, so just... come for me—”

Steve did.  He came messily, great white gushes of come shooting onto his stomach and chest and adonis belt.  He was gasping and moaning, his head rolling from side to side mindlessly in the cradle of his bound arms, and that—oh God, that was a good look, _really good fucking look,_ for Steve.  

Tony’s dick sent a pulse of aching want up through him.  He swallowed and worked his cheeks to ease the dryness in his mouth.  

They both paused for a moment when it was done, both rallying in the wake of Steve’s orgasm.  Steve just breathed, huge breaths like a drowning man, leaning back in the chair, spread and pinned and apparently comfortable; Tony, on the other hand, found himself holding very,very still.  There was something about the air, about the lack of other sounds in the lab and the knowledge that nothing was coming through the door without a tank-missile for the locks...  His dick pulsed again, and a sense of burbling excitement bubbled up in him.  It was a sort of greedy expectation; avarice, and confidence:  he wanted, and he was going to get what he wanted.

He licked his lips and swallowed again, then ran his hand through the mess on Steve’s stomach.  “Yeah,” he said.  He kept his voice quiet and calm, trying to hide the eagerness with a facade of amusement.  “Yeah, good job, Steve.  Nicely done.”

Steve snorted and opened his eyes, giving him back the amusement, at least.  “Was that the thing you wanted to do that you weren’t sure I was going to like?”

“What?  No, it tingles, I knew you would like it—”  Tony dipped his thumb into Steve’s belly button and watched Steve’s eyes fall shut again as his stomach muscles clenched in response. He swept his hand downward, along Steve’s left hip, down the top of the thigh and up the inside, cupping his balls in his hand.  

“Mmm...”  Steve wriggled, settling back just a smidge, giving him the small amount of additional room he could give.  “...Feels nice, Tony.”

“Good!  Good.”  Tony brought his other hand around, flicking at the small pieces of foam molding caught in Steve’s pubic hair.  “No, the mold—that was nothing; this _next_ part is the bit I think you’re not going to like.”

Steve opened his eyes again just enough to punctuate the conversation with a look.

“You have to know...” Tony started.  He was actually getting nervous, because this was daring even for him, and invasion that might go beyond the line of what they were doing.  But then, that might also be a good thing; if he punctured the bubble of this strange surreality they were engaged in, well... all that would happen was things would go back to normal...

He pulled the tub of antiseptic lube and started squirting it liberally everywhere, running it all over his own hands as well as around Steve’s cock.  Steve wasn’t hard again yet, but he was already twitching—the man was a miracle, really.  “You have to know that if you want out, you can get out,” Tony instructed briskly.  “If it’s too much—most folks don’t even try this, it’s not a common kink, but if you _do_ try it, it can be strong stuff, and I’ve _met you,_ you are a _hard-core asshole,_ so I’m willing to bet you’ll enjoy it.  But _if you don’t...”_  

He took a bracing gulp of air and held up the pH meter.  

He’d known what he was doing when he got it, even though he had done so the same day as the last visit, and had had no indication they would ever be doing this again.  He had had the option to order one of the hundreds (if not thousands) of stout glass probes on the market, and he hadn’t; he had ordered the stainless steel one, instead, only four millimeters wide and over eight inches long.  If he wanted a pH measurement on Steve’s come—which he kind of did, because a tentative tasting of the wipes after last time they’d done this had revealed that Steve’s man-juice was startlingly sweet, and not tangy—there were a dozen ways to do it, and eleven of them didn’t involve _this._

No, he was doing it _this_ way because he wanted to.  It was as simple as that.

He looked up from the probe, checking in with Steve.  

Steve was staring at the meter in vague apprehension— _too_ vague; the penny hadn’t dropped yet.  Well, it would soon.  

Tony pooled the sterilizing lube in his palm and used it to coat the probe.  Steve asked, “Are you... Are you planning to _stab_ me with that...?  Because it’s not _pointy,_ Stark, I don’t think it’ll _work—”_

Tony cracked a smile.  “I am not planning to stab you,” he said, watching the seconds on the monitor to his right tick upward—the lube needed to work for a minimum of ninety seconds to effectively kill any bacteria.  “It’s a pH meter.  I’m going to measure the pH of your jizz.”

Steve frowned, and started to say something, then stopped before he’d gotten a word out.  He frowned harder and turned his face away, pressing his cheek into his own wrist.

“What?” Tony asked.  Had he gotten it?  Was that the face of a man opposed to sounding?  Tony had been _so sure_ Steve would get off on this—

“Nothing,” Steve said—but he said it in a mutter, so obviously it was a lie.

 _“What?”_ Tony pressed.  “If you have doubts, now is the time to raise them.  One minute from now will be _a little too late!”_

“I just...”  Steve’s lips pressed together, hard.  “It’s fine, Stark; I’ll look it up when we’re done.”

”Look _what_ up?” Tony asked, baffled now.  Steve was actually upset, he could see that, but he had no idea why, because it was pretty obvious he wasn’t put off by the idea of a probe down his dick, and if _that_ didn’t bother him—

“It doesn’t matter—look, I _said_ I would look it up—”

“Yeah, or you could just ask me,” Tony said, nonplussed.  

“Fine!  Fine, then.”  Steve was scowling, face turned away from Tony, somehow managing to look sulky, hanging in the restraints like a sloth.  “What’s pH?” he bit out.

Tony blinked rapidly.  “You don’t—okay!” he cut himself off hastily.  Cap hadn’t even wanted to admit he didn’t know, the last thing he needed was Tony making a big deal of it.  Sometimes it was easy to forget that Steve had barely even finished high school.  “Okay, let me think how to explain this to a guy with, I’m guessing, no background in chemistry?”  

Steve tensed up even harder, which was the last thing Tony wanted.  

“Right.  You’ve heard of acid, though.”  Tony didn’t let it be a question, but he paused to make sure Steve was on board, anyway.

Steve was, and he looked back at Tony in surprise.  “You think my jizz might be _acid?”_

“No!  Well, sort of.  Look: pH is a measure of how acidic a thing is.  Or isn’t, actually—higher numbers are less acidic.  It’s just a property of liquids, every liquid has a pH.  Maple syrup has a pH, coffee has a pH—that’s pretty low, actually, about a four and half—lemon juice is even worse, around a two.  Water is neutral, it’s a seven.  And then the opposite of an acid is a base, that’s what you throw on the acid when you’re trying to get it to stop being acid, and some common bases are baking soda, or bleach.”

As he was speaking, he waved the probe idly in the air like a conductor’s baton.  That was the worst thing about this process; he couldn’t touch anything during these ninety seconds, or else he would contaminate the very surfaces he was trying to sanitize!  

“Humans naturally have a pH that’s in a pretty specific range, right around 7.4.  Jizz does, too—usually very slightly basic, because vaginas are usually slightly acidic and you want to cancel that out so that the sperm can survive.  But I’m not convinced your jizz is normal—I’m pretty sure it’s _not,_ actually—and in addition to throwing the sample under an SEM and running some tests, I would _also_ like to take pH measures, particularly of your prostate fluid, which in a normal person would be basic; I’m don’t think yours is.  Plus—”

Ninety seconds was up.  Tony reached out and took Steve’s cock, still soft and twitching after his last orgasm, in his hand, supporting it so that it formed a straight line.  Tony could see the moment when Steve figured out what was going to happen; his spine stiffened, his elbows pressing back as every part of him instinctively tried to get away from what Tony was about to do.  His hands stayed behind his neck, though, and his legs stayed cased in their stirrups, neither of which he would have had a hard time breaking out of, so Steve was still in the game, even as his head pressed back hard into the brown leather padding behind him.

Steve’s breath came out in a high keen as Tony pressed the tip of the probe to Steve’s slit.  It was clean—everything was clean after all that antiseptic—and even if it weren’t it wouldn’t have mattered because it was _Steve._

But this was still a taboo, still something that most men _didn’t do,_ something visceral and terrifying to the average penis-owner.  Tony wouldn’t have blamed Steve if he _had_ noped out, but he had been sure that wasn’t going to happen; not only did he think Steve would like it, but also, Steve wasn’t a big fan of backing down.

The probe settled in a bare half-inch at first, and Tony didn’t push, not literally or figuratively; he just watched Steve intently, monitoring.  Steve’s eyes were wide; he was staring at the probe, watching as it penetrated his slit, panting for breath and whining on the exhales.  He obviously hadn’t mentally prepared for this at all—which, to be fair, Tony _had_ kind of sprung it on him—but he didn’t look horrified; shocked yes, overwhelmed _hell_ yes, but he was turned _on,_ not turned _off._

Tony mentally sighed in relief and let the probe sink in another half-inch, the readings rising slowly from 7.04 to 7.21, to 7.25: increasingly basic as he passed through the lube (which was almost a true neutral) and into the urethra proper.  

By the time the probe had sunk in a full inch, Steve’s shoulders were relaxing again.  He was still gasping, open-mouthed, but the sounds he was making had dropped in pitch; they were more like moans, now.  He hadn’t taken his eyes off of the probe, off of Tony’s hand where it was cupping his rapidly-hardening member, but his arms had come forward again as much as they could.  He wasn’t pressing himself back into the leather anymore.

Tony smiled, using the hand not holding the probe up to tap Steve on the thigh with his elbow.  “Doing okay?” he asked.

Steve blinked several times, then darted his eyes up to Tony for a second before looking back at his dick quickly, almost like he thought Tony might take advantage of his distraction to stab the probe all the way in.  The sight seemed to hit him anew, and his mouth fell open for a second, a pink, glistening cavern, before he managed to push a word out of it.  “Tony...” he said, then stopped, too blown to think. _“Tony.”_

“Yeah,” Tony said, and slowly, _slowly_ the probe sank down.  7.51, now; getting more basic as it went.  “I’m here, Steve; I told you you could handle it.”

Steve shuddered, and Tony quickly returned his free hand to Steve’s junk to keep the movement from jostling the probe’s tip.  “Oh, God,” Steve said drunkenly. _“Tony._ That’s just— _Tony!”_

It was really hard not to smile.  “Good?” Tony asked, mostly baiting him.  “I’ve heard it can be.  Never tried it myself, but...  Let’s say I’ve known a few who were into it.”

“Hnnnn,” Steve said, shaking his head blindly, slurring a little.  “Well, now you know one more. _Christ.”_  The probe was all the way in, now; it had come to a rest, and Tony wasn’t about to push on it.  Steve’s improved verbal skills seemed like a good sign, and he hadn’t seemed upset by the process.  

Experimental success, Tony felt.

“How’s it feel?” he asked, letting go of the probe but keeping one hand close, just in case.  It swayed, but stayed upright, and he relaxed, letting his hand fall to Steve’s hip.  

“S’good,” Steve said, his voice coming out so fervent that Tony had to stifle a chuckle.  “Christ, it’s like...  like someone’s fucking my throat with a dildo made of chocolate, or something.”  

This time, Tony didn’t even _try_ to stifle the laugh, just busting out in guffaw, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

“Like a bow drawn back for before making far-distant bullseye,” Steve continued.  “It’s like...”  He stopped and smiled, too wide: he was _gone._ “It’s like the moment before you jump out of an airplane, and like the moment _after_ you jump out of an airplane, both at the same time.”

“All that, huh?”  Tony watched the probe out of the corner of his eye—7.66, now; still climbing, and precome was oozing up around the metal length of it, too—but most of his attention focused on Steve’s face.  “Sounds great.”

“Ah, God...”  Steve blinked up at the ceiling, and then offered, “You could fuck me with it.”  

Tony’s hands instinctively clenched, both the one on Steve’s hip and the one—possibly he had not been appreciating this situation as well as he should have been—holding Steve’s dick.  “Excuse me?”

“You could.”  Steve’s voice was a slurred buzz, Tony noted with the tiny portion of his mind not completely bowled over by the offer.  “Bet it’d feel good.  In and out, Stark, come on.”

Tony thought about it for a second, his fingers tapping absently on Steve’s hip, and then he ticked his tongue— _tlock!—_ decisively.  “Right,” he said, and started to pull out the probe.

It had sunk further into Steve as he had left it, due to Steve’s passage opening around it as he relaxed, presumably; there was a good distance to go to pull it back out, and Tony moved it slowly.  Steve shuddered as he did it, breathy little pants coming out of him like they’d been pulled along with the probe.  The readings didn’t change much as Tony pulled the probe back, and he worried about whether he should add more lube; but then probe was almost out and a glistening gush of precome erupted around it.  

“Alright, then,” Tony murmured to himself, mesmerized by the flow of shining liquid.  A moment later, the probe was sinking back into Steve, slow as quicksand, and just as inevitable.  Steve shouted breathlessly, wordless and needy, and Tony used his left thumb—the one on the hand holding Steve’s length steady—to stroke him, right under the head where he liked it.  

Steve shuddered.  His stomach quivered.

Tony smiled, and did it again.  “You like that?” he asked musingly.  “I’d imagine.  Puts pressure on it, doesn’t it?”

 _“God,”_ Steve blurted.  His mouth was slackly open, a tiny string of drool creeping over his lush lower lip.

“You okay there?”

 _“No._ I am—oh God.  I don’t know what this is, but it is so much bigger than okay.  Tony, Tony—”

Tony shifted his grip on Steve’s cock, stroking towards the end steadily, caressing him with the smooth inner lining of his foreskin, then pushing it back from the head and back up, again, and again, and again.  As the probe sunk slowly in—readings still climbed, but they seemed to be slowing down; Tony guessed they’d top out around 8.1-something, based on the current rate—Tony let it go again, reaching down to rub his spare thumb on the slick-shiny skin at the base of the head.  Steve threw his head back, shouting, and the precome pulsed out again, once, twice, and then Tony gaped, because Steve was coming around the probe.

Robbed of its momentum by the probe in Steve’s urethra, the come just droozled everywhere, like icing spreading across a cinnamon roll, dripping down the head and sides of Steve’s cock, dropping down in a thin strand towards his stomach.  Tony put the probe aside—readings had already been transmitted to the machine, but they had dropped sharply towards neutral when Steve came—and rubbed Steve’s length comfortingly.  “Alright,” he said, “alright.  How you doing, Big Guy, you doing alright?”

Steve groaned, letting his head sag back against the padding, rolling it from side to side.  It looked absolutely nothing like a _no,_ though.

“I guess that’s a yes,” Tony said, a laugh in his voice.  Gently, he set Steve’s softening cock down on his stomach, pulling his sticky hand away to wipe it on an unobtrusive towel.  “You have some options here—couple of different ways this could go.”

Steve’s chest was still heaving with deep, gasping breaths.  He lolled his head to the side and opened his eyes, eyelashes raising so he could regard Tony in a show of paying attention which would have been more effective if he hadn’t obviously been faking.

“I—Jesus, Steve—”  Tony reached up with the towel and mopped the drool away from Steve’s mouth.  Steve groaned and pushed into it, his eyelashes fluttering shut again.

Tony almost dropped the towel, rescuing it only with a juggling toss that threw it away to land with a cottony splat on the ground.  “Couple ways to go,” he groaned, “and _Jesus,_ Steve, pay attention, because one of us has to and there is very little blood left in my brain at this point.”

Steve groaned again and focused.  “Yeah, okay,” he said.  His voice came out gravelly and weak, but the words were clear enough.  “‘Kay.  Options.  Yeah?”

“Right.  So the first is, I keep masturbating you—no, stop, keep listening—”

“I’m here, keep going.”  

But Steve’s chest was heaving again, and Tony wasn’t convinced he had his head in the game.  He reached out both hands, taking Steve’s face between them and turning it so that he was looking straight into the other man’s eyes.  “The other option,” Tony told him seriously, “is that we stop dicking around.”

Steve froze for a moment.  The corners of his mouth tilted up in a sarcastic smile.

“No pun intended,” Tony added hastily.  “Just—I’m saying—this isn’t just science, alright?  Plausible deniability—it’s getting steadily less plausible, here, and I want—”

“Do it.”  Steve’s voice was rough but driven, and Tony felt his pulse kick up into overtime in response.

“You don’t even know what I—”

“Don’t care.  Trust you.”  Steve pulled back, out of Tony’s hands, and settled his head on the pad of the chair again.  “I just let you stick a _probe_ down my _dick,_ Stark, and it was _amazing,_ so whatever it is—it’s fine.  I trust you.  Just _do it.”_

Tony pulled back, his heart pounding, and opened up his belt.  “It’ll take me a minute,” he muttered, then added by way of explanation, “To get ready.”

“It’s fine,” Steve repeated.  “I’ll just... sit here.  Like this.”  He paused, then added with a smirk, “Maybe take a nap.”

Tony laughed, as he had doubtless been intended to.  “Fuck you, Rogers.”

“And here I thought that was what _you_ were gonna do.”  

Tony didn’t reply.  Instead, he shoved down his pants and underwear together, first peeling them away from his jutting, aching erection.  He stepped out of them and grabbed the box of wipes and the lube, then stepped around the chair to set them on the little shelf on the far side, where he would be able to reach them, before stepping on the low shelf and swinging his leg over Steve.  He came to a rest kneeling over Steve, naked from the waist down, his ass brushing the raised tops of Steve’s thighs; Steve’s calves were still trapped in the stirrups, and if Tony leaned back, Steve’s legs would form almost a chair back behind him.

Steve caught his breath as Tony swung into place on top of him, staring over and a little bit up at Tony, his mouth parting.  There was something excited in his eyes, something shocked and giddy, and a whine of—it had to be _desire,_ even if that made no sense to _Tony—_ came out of his mouth.  

“Yeah,” Tony muttered, “yeah.  Just a—just... gimme a moment.”  He ran his hands up and down his thighs—not erotically; he was actually nervous, although he’d never admit it out loud—and then leaned forward, rising up on his knees and propping his right hand on the cushion beside Steve’s head as he reached behind him with the left.

It brought their faces into close proximity, he noticed; close enough to kiss, if either one of them just moved three more inches.  He thought about it for a second—two seconds, three—thought about leaning in and pressing his mouth to the glistening red softness of Steve’s...  

But Steve probably didn’t want him to do that.  And anyway, if he _did_ want to kiss Tony, it wasn’t like he couldn’t lean forward.

 _He’s tied up,_ Tony’s brain argued.

 _He’s Captain America,_ Tony argued back.   _He could still make it happen._

If that were what he wanted.

Which it wasn’t.  Clearly.

Tony grunted as his fingers closed on the plug, pulling.  It came easily; it wasn’t a large plug, maybe the width of Tony’s thumb at the base and barely wider in the flare just above it.  He dropped it on the side-table, feeling his asshole flutter at the change, at the sudden ability to clench down all the way without being held open.

Steve’s eyes were wide and shocked.  “You had—” he started.  “You—this whole time?  But—holy _God,_ Tony, you—!”

Tony smiled.  “Yeah, well... patience.  I compromised, wasn’t sure if you’d let me do this or not, so I went with something I could wear for a while.  And that’s—it’s gonna be a lot smaller than _you,_ so just... let me...”  He pumped lube onto his fingers one-handed, then rubbed his fingers together to spread it before reaching behind himself once again.  

Steve’s eyes darted from his working shoulder down, although he wouldn’t be able to see anything given the angles; back up, and then back down again.  He swallowed.  “Are you working yourself open?” he asked.  His voice came out rough and strained.  “Are you—are you—oh, Jesus, Tony, just tell me what you’re doing—”

“Yes,” Tony said.  He hunched forward a smidge, getting a better angle; his head was almost touching Steve’s shoulder, now.  “I’m—you’re right, I’m fingering myself.”  

Steve twitched at the word _fingering,_ and the golden skin over his clavicle brushed Tony’s nose.  

“I’ve got two fingers in—two is easy, two went right in, after the plug kept me loose—and I’m working, spreading them—fuck—getting myself as wide as I can.  Here, I’ll—”  He hooked the two fingers he had buried in himself, tugging against the inside rim of himself before the fingers slipped out.  His arm shook as he pushed them inside again.  “If I pull the rim from the inside—” he said.  His voice was breathy, gasping.  “The muscles go loose, and I can—”

“Please,” Steve begged.  “Fuck, Tony— _please.”_

“Not yet,” Tony said, straining for the angle.  “Need to—your dick is _huge,_ Steve, I’ve got to—”

“Lean on me.”  

Tony’s eyes jerked open again—when had he closed them?—to focus on Steve’s face, because that had been an order.  

“You need to lean forward, right?” Steve said, and _of course_ he would intuitively understand the angles involved.  “Yeah.  Do it, Tony, just rest against—”

He stopped talking and caught his breath sharply as Tony leaned forward, resting his head against the angled bracket of Steve’s pinned arm.  Only the thin cotton of Tony’s t-shirt kept their chests from pressing together all the way down, and for a wild second Tony thought about straightening up and taking it off, but... nah.  Better not.

“Okay,” Steve said.  His voice was calm, but at the same time tense, in Tony’s ear.  “Easier now?”

Tony nodded, rocking his head against Steve’s arm.  

“Go on, then.  Try—try twisting your arm around—”

“You think I wasn’t _doing that?”_

“Not your fingers, your _arm,”_ Steve insisted.  “So that you can—push out on yourself, like—”

_“Oh!”_

Beneath him, almost out of Tony’s line of sight, Steve smirked.

“Fuck, Steve, that feels—”

“Yeah.”  The warm surface of Steve’s chest pressed closer against his as Steve sighed.  “Yeah, I always liked that—oh, God, Tony—”

“Yeah.”  Tony pulled his fingers out, snagging a wipe and leaning up and back before cleaning his hand off.  “Steve, please say you’re ready—”

Steve groaned and rolled his head against the headrest.  “I have _been ready,_ Tony, you have _no idea—”_

“Pretty sure I do.”  Tony reached behind him again, but this time it was to take Steve in hand.  Steve was hard again—not a surprise—and sticky with his own, half-dried come.  Tony got another pump of the lube and slathered it around him—Steve groaned at the slick, firm touch—before lining him up and sitting back.

Tony was a grown man and he had done this before:  he _was not_ going to rush it.  But damn, was it tempting to just throw himself back, feel the long, hard length of Steve splitting him open...  

No.  He pushed down slowly and carefully, almost groaning as the thick head of Steve’s cock began to spread him open.  He _did_ babble; he made an executive decision that babbling was allowed, and ridiculous phrases flowed out of him in a non-stop stream:  “Fuck, you feel good.  God, you’re so _thick,_ Steve, I can’t—I _love_ it, it’s so—”  He gasped as the spread of it, the intense, invasive, _open_ feel, came to a peak, and then, soundlessly but with a feeling like a pop, the fat head of Steve’s cock was inside him.  “Oh, god,” Tony said quietly, and then—there was plenty of lube, and all he had to do was let gravity take over—he slid slowly, slowly, _slo-o-o-owly_ down the shaft.  

The slide seemed to take forever—but at least Steve seemed to feel the same way.  He had already been gasping by the time Tony got the head inside, and as Tony slid down his cock, taking it in, Steve started tossing his head from side to side.  He was covered with sweat, Tony noticed, had been ever since the pH probe, and small, hitching moans came on every fifth or so rapid, desperate breath.  He looked _wrecked,_ and Tony tried to ignore the tiny, smug thrill that came from that, from seeing this man, whom he respected, whom he lo— _liked,_ whom he _liked—_ so utterly, completely destroyed under his hands.

Tony was shuddering, himself, by the time Steve had bottomed out inside of him.  God, Steve was _huge,_ and Tony was _so full—!_ “Fuck, Steve, fuck, fuck, _fuck,_ you feel so good.  God, it’s like I’m going to choke on it, like your cock is _in me_ all the way up to my _throat,_ it’s like—”

Steve let out a large groan, his head rolling from side to side.  “Tony,” he said.  His voice was thick, and his lips were trembling.  He sounded drunk.  “Tony, Tony, _please.”_

“Please what, Buttercup?”

Steve shook his head weakly.  “Don’t _tease,_ Tony.”

“I have to tease; it is my nature,” Tony shot back, quoting the old fable.  But he also shifted a little, gathering his muscles to move, and the faint squeezing was apparently enough to send Steve gasping once again.

“You know,” Tony said, pushing up on his knees and shuddering at the tugging pull of Steve’s enormous penis sliding out of him, “this is a good look for you.  I could get used to this, used to seeing you all spread out for me, going crazy, needing my body.”

_“Toooonyyy!”_

“Yeah.  I think I like this, with you all tied up, helpless in front of me.  Underneath me.  I think I could keep you like this for hours, honestly, just straining, trying to move, but not _really_ trying to escape because you love it—that—much—”  Tony paused as he came to the apogee of his movement, waiting, watching, giving Steve a minute to wrestle with the ties on his wrists and the bonds on his legs, a minute to try to _move,_ an instinctive attempt to jack-knife his body, although even then Tony had been right:  he wasn’t _really_ trying, because he never shifted his hips _up—_

—and then Tony was sinking down again, feeling the ache of it, the intrusion as he took Steve again.  “Fuck,” he breathed, “God _damn,_ Steve.  Jesus, this is good.”

“I—I—I—fuck, _Tony,_ I’m close, I’m gonna—”

Tony promised himself one more stroke and rose up again, faster now because he’d gotten used to the stretch and the size of it.  “Do it,” he ordered.  “If you’re close, then just—”  And then he took Steve in again, all the way down to the root of him, clenching instinctively on his wide shaft, he got to watch Steve throw his head back, hard—the chair made an awful cracking sound—and come again for him, this time inside of him, a spreading warmth that made Tony shudder.  Tony could feel Steve’s dick pulsing inside of him as he came and came.

“Fuck, Steve.  Fuck.”  Steve was shaking under him, chest heaving.  Tony was shaking, too, but much less:  there was a fine tremble in his fingers as they pressed against Steve’s shoulders.  “Fuck.  Okay.  Here’s what—fuck, Jesus—here’s what we’re going to do.  I’m not going to move—no, _it’s okay, Steve—_ I’m not going to move, and you’re going to recover—it’ll take you about five seconds—and then we’re going to go again.  Okay?”

“Hnn!  Hhhh—ha— _yeah,”_ Steve said, finally managing to get words out.  Tony couldn’t help it:  he smiled, ducking his head.  It was just...  It felt good, he decided, to have wrecked Steve so very thoroughly.  It was satisfying, like nothing else could be.  

And it felt better to know they weren’t done yet.

And... yup.  There it went.

Tony met Steve’s eyes and waggled his eyebrows.  Steve groaned in response.  

“I can’t believe this,” Steve said, slurring slightly.  His eyes were crossing, too.  “This is...  I mean, it’s _great—_ really great!—of you, it’s just... a lot.”

“Yeah...”  Tony clenched down, then raised himself up, pulling a ragged noise from Steve as he started again.  “...I’m not really known for half-assing things.”

“Should I—shit!  Oh, God, that’s good—Should I make a joke?  About the—shit!—phrasing?”

“Why not?” Tony answered casually.  “Since I’m not using your _mouth_ right now.”

Apparently that was a perverse enough answer to silence Steve, because he jerked underneath Tony and didn’t reply.

“But on the other hand...” Tony mused, repositioning his hands on the still-intact portion of the exam chair and using the improved leverage to pick up his pace sharply, “...if you can still talk, I may need to try harder.”  

Steve threw his head back again, and the chair gave another loud _creak._ “Tony, yes—that’s—that’s good, Tony, more—please—”

“Yes,” Tony said.  He was starting to feel the rhythm of it, now, the rhythm and the build.  Tension was rising in his lower back.  Although his thighs and abs were burning with the repeated movement, it was a good burn, hot and satisfying.  He was practically throwing himself down onto Steve, now; he was adjusted to the thickness, but the length was never going to stop being a surprise, so _much,_ so _full—_ “God, _Steve,”_ Tony growled, _“Fuck,_ you are—you _feel_ so good, I mean, you are—shit!”  

Now, finally, Steve was out of control enough to move under him.  He was still in the restraints, but they weren’t holding him down—there was nothing around his waist, just the lack of good angles from the awkward position—and he was snapping his hips up, his magnificent stomach muscles more than enough to repeat the movement over and over again.  Tony wasn’t complaining, though:  the pretense of scientific inquiry—always thin—had long since torn through; this was fucking, now, and what was more, it was damn good fucking, too.  “Yes,” Tony snapped, “Good.  Come on, Steve; you can do it, at least once more, come on—”  

Steve jerked and moaned, moving more sharply, driving up into Tony even as Tony drove down, and that—God, it was incredible.  Steve was so big, he was hitting Tony’s prostate on every stroke, and it felt swollen and achy and _amazing,_ a feeling so intense it was like it sent sparks across Tony’s vision with every stroke.  “Yes, Steve—good—come on.  Come for me Steve, come on, come, _now!”_

Steve came, shoving back with his shoulder and up with his hips, burying himself as deep as he possibly could in Tony, the muscles of his neck clearly defined with the tension.  

The chair, pushed beyond the limits of its endurance, broke in half.  With a crescendoing series of snaps, creaks, and crunches, the top part of the back snapped off, although the leather of the seat held up, leaving the majority of the chair back dangling from the stub like a broken bone swinging from the tendon.  The headrest broke off completely, tumbling to the floor with a dramatic _thud!_

Tony took a moment, panting, to watch the broken bit swing back and forth, and then said, “Huh.”

“Sorry.”  Steve still sounded drugged, blinking dumbly at him.

“No problem,” Tony said automatically.  “That—that happens.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Eh...”  Tony tipped his head to the side.  “It’s to be expected.”

The leather gave a little creaking sound as the chair chunk swung back and forth. _Creek-eek, creek-eek!_

“Still,” Steve said, starting to sound vaguely guilty, “I’m sorry about breaking your furniture.  And I’m sorry we couldn’t finish.”

“Well... we still _could....”_

“Um.  What?”  Steve looked ridiculously hopeful, and Tony made a quick decision that he was probably going to regret, and he was _aware_ of that, he _was,_ but he still had a naked Steve Rogers slowly softening inside him and he was not going to just _give that up._

“I have a bed,” Tony said.  Weird, his heart was still beating really fast; maybe he’d been more startled by the chair breaking than he had thought?  “You’re welcome to come finish this up with me there.”

Steve looked genuinely torn for all of about a second and a half, and then nodded.  “Okay, Tony,” he said.

The next two minutes were heavily taken up with helping Tony get down without stabbing himself on the broken metal of the chair, and with not thinking at all about the terrifying step he had just taken.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Valmasy and Buhfly for the quick turnaround on the editing! There is one more chapter to go on this fic, and it's actually all written; I just need to edit it, so it should be up sometime in November. (Which is good, because given NaNoWriMo, nothing else will...)

“Here, it’s this—it’s just in here.”  Tony pulled Steve through the door of his bedroom with only a little bit too much eagerness.  They were both still naked—one of the perks of living above his workplace was that he could black out the elevator cameras—and, judging by their mutual lack of direction, still pretty sex-stupid.  Tony was mostly just trying to aim them at the first horizontal surface before they gave in and fucked on the kitchen counter.  After all, if the chair couldn’t take it, the counter  _ definitely  _ couldn’t.  

It was hard to focus, though.  Steve kept  _ touching  _ him.  

A hand on his arm here, a cheek rubbed against his shoulder there...  In the elevator, Steve  had crowded up behind him, rubbing a half-hard penis against the crack of Tony’s ass—which, how the hell did Steve even  _ manage  _ a sixth erection?!—and now he had wound his  _ fingers  _ into Tony’s  _ hair,  _ and  _ oh God,  _ it felt so  _ good.   _ As a result, they entered the penthouse stumbling and uncoordinated, bumping into each other and then spinning apart again, only to be reeled in once more.  

“This way, Steve,  _ hurry—”   _

“I  _ am  _ hurrying—”

They tumbled through the bedroom door in a heap, all but racing to the wide and sturdy expanse of Tony’s bed.  

Tony got there first and threw back the covers, taking them all the way down to the end of the bed like a hotel coverlet.  Steve climbed on while Tony was doing that, laying down on his back and reaching for Tony with hunger in his eyes.  

“Oh, you think?  You wanna be on the bottom again, huh?  Don’t think so.”  He tugged ineffectively at Steve’s shoulder, then gave up and used his words.  “I want you on top, this time.”

“What?  Oh.  Okay, here, let me—”  Steve jack-knifed up into a sitting position, then rolled smoothly up and over onto his knees, and Tony just took a second to catch his breath after that sight before crawling onto the bed.  

Tony had about three seconds while he moved to make up his mind about how he wanted this—and he would get what he wanted, no doubt about that; Steve had followed every lead he’d made so far, Tony didn’t think he would suddenly change that pattern.  But the question was, did he want it from behind, or in missionary, or some other position...?

_ From behind,  _ he decided.  Less prostate stimulation, but he would probably feel it more, and that was definitely something he wanted.  

He swung himself around, planting himself on his hands and knees, a little bit in front of Steve.  His toes landed on the outside of Steve’s knees.  

From behind him, he heard a very sharp catch of breath.

“Like what you see?” Tony asked over his shoulder.

_ “Tony.”   _ Steve’s voice sounded good; rough, but good.  “Tony, Tony, let me—”

Tony jumped, just a little, as warm, strong fingers touched his ass.  Steve’s touch firmed as he grew more confident, as Tony gave no objection to the caress, and soon he was cupping the globes of Tony’s cheeks, spreading them, letting a drift of air touch his hole.  The air wasn’t all that cool, all things considered—FRIDAY was clearly on top of the temperature controls in her artificial, non-judgemental way—but it still gave Tony goosebumps, and he swallowed down the moan that tried to climb its way up his throat.  

“God,” Steve breathed behind him, and Tony smiled dopily down at the sheets.  

A thumb brushed over his hole, once, twice, and Tony caught both his breath and the keening whine that threatened to escape him.  He pushed back with his hips—not hard, just a little—and Steve made a noise of assent before using his thumb to breach him, sinking it in slowly, deliciously.  

“I should still be good, but there’s lube in the headboard if you want it.”  Tony’s voice came out breathless and rough.  He gave a little cough when he was done speaking, to cover.

“Yeah, please.”  Steve sounded distracted, and a moment later he rotated his thumb around so that Tony shuddered at the sensation.

From this position and distance, Tony could just barely reach the cabinet set into the headboard; he stretched and managed to snag the bottle, a synthetic silicon solution which he passed back to Steve.  

“Thanks.”

“So polite,” Tony snarked, resettling into his hands-and-knees position.

“Yeah, well...”  There were slick sounds as Steve lubed up, and now the hands that grasped Tony’s hips were slippery.  Tony imagined them leaving shiny tracks over his hips and almost moaned again.  “My manners are part of my charm.”  

Tony panted heavily, his mind too scattered to think of a reply for a second.  Steve’s  _ hands  _ were on his  _ ass,  _ this was  _ amazing— _ “You know what else is part of your charm?”  

“Tell me,” Steve ordered, smiling.  Two fingers pressed into Tony’s hole, crooking; they just barely brushed his prostate, and Tony gritted his teeth against the noise that almost came out of him at that.  They rotated, and then tugged lightly at Tony’s rim from the inside as Steve pulled them out again.  

A second later and those same two fingers were back, but now they were bent at the knuckle so that they pressed in more bluntly but twice as thick.  Now Tony  _ did  _ moan, wordless and low, before dropping down from his wrists to his elbows to disguise the shaking in his arms.

“Tell me,” Steve repeated.  There was a grin in his voice, and just as Tony started to speak he pressed in again, harder now, deeper, and Tony went breathless all over again.  “Tony?  What’s part of my charm?”

“You—fuck—you— _ your dick,”  _ Tony finally managed.   _ “Your dick  _ is part of your charm, how about you give me that?”

Steve snickered out loud, now, and the next thing Tony knew, there was a smooth, fat cockhead pressing up against him, harder, harder—oh, God, how had he managed to forget how  _ big  _ Steve was between now and fifteen minutes ago?!  He groaned, feeling absurdly stretched, split in dozens of pieces—and then it was in, and the stretch stabilized, and he groaned again at the feeling of Steve piercing deep, deep, all the way into him.  

They both stopped and panted when Steve bottomed out.  Tony felt like his eyes were rolling mindlessly; Steve seemed to have a slight wheeze at the end of every breath.  Tony felt tight everywhere, from his overstretched rim, gone thin and hot around Steve’s cock, to his aching chest, to the skin at the corners of his eyes as he stared, sightless, wide-eyed at nothing.  All he was in that moment was sensation—sensation, and the knowledge that this was  _ Steve,  _ this was  _ Steve, Captain America, his teammate and good friend Steve,  _ and Tony was doomed, doomed, doomed, and it was  _ amazing. _

“Move,” Tony ordered.  His voice croaked like a frog’s when it came out, but it didn’t falter.

“Yes,” Steve said, and did.  

Tony’s fingers tightened hard on the silk of his sheets as Steve pulled out of him.  Steve’s thumbs were digging into the round pads of his cheeks, and Tony felt the suction aching, deep within him, as Steve drew himself out.  Almost there,  _ almost... there.... _  And then the thick head of Steve’s cock pressed against his rim from the inside, and Steve reversed directions.  Now he was moving faster, not pounding, not yet, but it wasn’t the achingly slow slide it had been a moment ago—

—oh, God,  _ now  _ it was a pounding, Christ, fuck, fuck,  _ fuck— _

Steve didn’t even have to try for it, he was just so huge that Tony felt it everywhere, from his prostate which sent screaming shocks of sensation up his spine, to the deliciously taken  _ ache  _ inside of him, to the shiny pulses of stretch in his rim whenever Steve pulled back far enough to tug it outward.  

Tony gave up and let the sounds spill out of him, all the pleading and the gasping and the whimpering, helpless and pinned and so obviously loving it.  It was going to bite him in the ass, eventually, this freedom, this openness; sooner or later, Steve was going to piece together how Tony really felt, and then he was going to be in trouble, because then none of his protestations were going to save him from the incipient demise of their friendship.  

But he was too far gone now, too into it, too into the  _ ecstasy  _ of it, to keep everything under control.  So instead, he gave it up—gave it all up—and waved goodbye to the future even as the present exploded into an overwhelming cacophony of sensation.

Tony would have bet money on Steve—hair-trigger Steve, who could come from a brush of cool air across his stomach—coming first, but he would have lost that bet.  Instead, it was Tony who lost (or won?) the race, realizing suddenly mid-stroke that, if things continued as they were, he was going to come abruptly, swiftly, and messily.  Steve’s strokes were milking his prostate in spite of the position, and there was already a strand of cooling precome stretching from his dick to the mattress; it wasn’t going to take long—not much—he was too close—he was—he was—

“Oh,  _ JESUS fucking CHRIST, Steve!   _ Fuck, fuck, fu— _ oh FUCK!”   _ Steve kept up the pace, kept moving, didn’t stop, didn’t even slow down, and Tony went temporarily blind, shattering apart, mindless and shouting and frantic until one of Steve’s big arms wrapped around him and lifted him,  _ pinned  _ him upright, his back pressed tightly to Steve’s chest.  

Tony panted and whined, then shoved back against Steve, then whined again: he was hypersensitive in the wake of his orgasm, and it hurt too much, now, to take a cock like Steve’s.  

“Fuck,” he panted, “Fuck, fuck—I need a minute, sorry—so sorry—shit, Steve—”

“It’s okay,” Steve said, his breath warm on the back of Tony’s neck.  “You were—Tony, you were—” 

Tony whimpered and gave one long, full-body shudder.  Steve’s breath caught behind him.  

“Just don’t move,” Tony said.  “Give me a moment, and I’ll be—”

“Can I be back on the bottom?”  The words came out like undercooked brownies, still jiggling in the center, and Tony raised his eyebrows in surprise.  He had some thoughts about it, about Steve wanting to be on the bottom, about him lasting so much longer when he was mobile.  

“Is it the passivity?” he wondered aloud.  “You like having things done to you?  I could work with that—”

“No, it’s—”  Steve stopped talking as if Tony had interrupted him, but he hadn’t.  A short moment of silence filled the room, broken only by their mutually heavy breathing, before Steve explained in a subdued tone, “I like not being able to hurt you.” 

Tony thought about that, too, but only for half a second, because when you put it like that everything got very obvious, didn’t it?  Steve had super strength; Steve was afraid of  _ literally _ fucking his way through Tony.  Add to that Steve’s monster cock, and it was actually a legitimate concern.  When Steve was on top, it was all on him to control the depth and angle and so forth, because Tony had about as much hope of stopping him at that point as a doily had of stopping a bullet; but when  _ Tony  _ was on top, Steve could trust that Tony would take care of himself.  When Tony was on top, Steve could be aroused, instead of afraid.    

“Great,” Tony said, easily except for the gasping edge of his breathing.  “Let’s get you back underneath me.”

“Okay.”  Steve wrapped his arms even more octopus-like around Tony’s chest.  “Hold on,” he warned, “and tuck your legs up.”  Steve’s knee came up beside Tony’s hip, and he was pushing off, and suddenly they were flipping around, Tony held secure in the spin by Steve’s iron-tight grip.  

Tony blinked, suddenly finding himself half upright and semi-vertical, facing away from Steve in a kind of reverse cowgirl position, Steve’s cock still rock-hard, buried in his ass.  He flailed, burying his hands in the sheets and clenching his legs instinctively around Steve’s for balance.  “Steve!  What the hell!”

Movement beneath him suggested Steve was shrugging.  “It seemed like the fastest way.”  

It sounded like an apology, but Tony was pretty sure it really wasn’t one.  

“Show-off.”  

“You should talk.”  Steve huffed out a laugh, warm air puffing against Tony’s back.  

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  

But there was a tiny grin still tugging at Tony’s mouth. 

Slowly, gingerly, he spun in place, crab-walking around the pivot point of Steve’s cock until they were once again face to face.  “Jesus, Steve.  You  _ flipped us in the air  _ without even  _ pulling out,  _ what the hell.”

Steve, when Tony finally got to see his face again, had a slight frown between his brows.  “I was worried that pulling out might hurt more,” he admitted.  

Tony smiled and tried not to feel touched.  Or at least not to show that he was feeling touched.  “It would have; you were right.”  

Steve beamed.

Then he arched his hips.  “Are you—do you feel... better?  Now?  I mean, would you be able to—”

He stopped talking as Tony rocked gently forward, coming down to lie across Steve’s chest, braced on his elbows.  Tony had a moment to be grateful that he didn’t have the arc reactor anymore; if he had, it would have been digging into Steve’s skin right now.

Steve reacted to his shifted position with closed eyes and blissful expression.  Tony tucked his small smile away and reached up to brush some of Steve’s sweaty hair out of his face.  “Well, if you’re ready for me to go, Big Guy...”

Steve bit his lip and opened his eyes just enough to meet Tony’s gaze, his eyes two slits of blue that somehow managed to look fond.  “Please,” he said fervently.

Tony ducked his head away, resting his forehead against Steve’s sweaty, heaving collarbone.  There was something...  something about seeing Steve so undone, so  _ wrecked,  _ which was just—

He swallowed and raised up.  He was still sensitive, although not as badly as he had been just after coming.  It was just enough to feel swollen, feel raw where he wrapped around Steve, enough to feel each thrust dialed up to ten—but not to eleven.  He could still do this.

He groaned as he sank back down, again and again, his thighs trembling with strain.  It wasn’t so bad with a woman, because when he was atop a woman, she generally had her legs on either side of him.  Here, he was the one doing the straddling, and it made the angle awkward and difficult.  Worth it, though, on a couple of counts...  

Tony had always liked it like this, for one thing, for all he hadn’t had a relationship with a man in...  God, maybe ten years, at this point?  And doing it with Steve was a heck of an improvement on doing it with toys, so that was  _ fantastic. _

But also, he liked watching  _ Steve.   _ Liked watching him lose his cool, liked watching him lose his  _ mind _ ...  Liked shutting him up, too, but not in a cruel way; it was just that Tony sometimes thought that Steve didn’t know  _ how  _ to take a break, and now, he was giving him one—or, well, giving him five so far tonight, but who was counting?  

They had had their differences, he and Steve, especially with the Ultron mess last year—his fault—but he still  _ cared  _ about Steve.  They were still  _ friends. _

So Tony wanted to see him happy.  That was all.  Nothing wrong with that, right?

He pulled up too far, this time, and the head of Steve’s cock caught at his rim.  He groaned and eased himself back down, his head sagging forward on his neck.  Steve was sweating and gasping under him.  He was close, but not close enough; Tony didn’t know if he had the strength, the endurance, to keep going—

Strong hands caught Tony under the ass, then, and he opened his eyes—when had he closed them?—to see Steve holding him, guiding his hips, more than strong enough to just hold Tony, to bounce him on his dick however he liked with no input from Tony at all, and that—

Tony clenched up instinctively at the realization, gasping.  He was a lot more turned on than the idea really warranted, his stomach feeling weak with desire.  He folded forward, collapsing onto Steve’s chest, but he said, “Go, do it,” and Steve took him at his word.  He shifted the angle a bit—raised his knees and planted his feet, tilted his hips for a better line—and then set to work, lifting Tony and bringing him down, again, again, again,  _ again... _

The noises coming from Tony were just  _ embarrassing  _ now, moans and whimpers and pleas.  Nonsense phrases tumbled from his lips, and he felt slack, boneless,  _ helpless _ ...  He wasn’t, but he  _ felt  _ that way.  It was everything he had been hoping for, although he hadn’t wanted to admit it.  Fucking Steve was  _ elemental,  _ in a way which was both completely predictable, yet still freshly shocking.  

Tony lay there, let himself be moved, just watching Steve from under his lashes.  He watched as Steve’s mouth worked, and his eyes fluttered shut, and his shoulders grew tense—the long muscles of his neck stood out, growing more and more taut, and Tony could feel the quadriceps behind him tensing, too—Steve was close, he was  _ so close— _

“Come on,” Tony muttered, shifting as he recovered.  His cock began to firm up again, hardening under the pounding pressure of Steve’s passion.  “Come on, Steve, fuck me—come on, come for me, you can do it—”

Tony was really never going to get over how  _ dramatically  _ Steve always reacted to his voice.  At his words, Steve arched beneath Tony, throwing his head back and lifting both of their chests off the bed; he thrust, much harder than he had before, burying his length inside Tony to the hilt, then following with short, sharp thrusts that barely moved.  

He threw his head back, crying out Tony’s name in a full-throated shout as he came.  

Tony watched Steve’s uptilted face carefully: he probably wasn’t going to get too many more chances to watch Steve come; best to memorize what it looked like while he still could.  Steve look transcendent, peaceful, his eyes closed in bliss and his mouth slackly open, glistening wetly and, for once, free of tension...  The warm, low-angle light of the room would have been kind anyway—it was kind to Tony, and Tony had a hell of a lot more scars and wrinkles than Steve did—but on Steve’s skin, it practically  _ glowed. _  For one fanciful second, Tony imagined he was fucking Helios instead, fucking the sun god, like Icarus in the ancient myth.

Tony’s smile slid off his face like the beads of sweat trickling their way down over Steve’s heaving chest.  He remembered what had happened to Icarus.

“God, Tony.”  Steve’s hand came up, ruffling the hair on the back of Tony’s head, pressing his face into Steve’s chest.  “God, you really—you’re really good at—uh.  This.  You are.  I...”

Tony listened, waiting bonelessly for Steve to finish his sentence, but Steve lapsed into silence, instead.  Tony cleared his throat.  “Thanks, Steve...”  

His voice trailed off instead of stopping with his usual quick patter, but he did, barely, manage to rescue his tone from soppiness.  He shook it off and shifted, goosebumps breaking out all over his skin at the way Steve, even flaccid, still filled him so thoroughly.  The stretch was incredible, the deep ache was perfect...  Tony held back a moan as the shift in position dragged his own half-turgid cock along Steve’s smooth skin.  

Steve gasped at his movement, propping himself up on his elbows.  “Do you want me to pull out?”  He looked reluctant, as if he would prefer not to just yet, and Tony jumped on the excuse with both feet.  

“Not needed.”  He waved one hand vaguely in the air to his left.  “In a bit; for now it’s...”  The hand moved more emphatically.  “...it’s nice.  Leisurely.”

Steve smiled quickly, brilliantly, and let himself flop back down on the bed by pulling his elbows clear; Tony gave a bitten-off yelp at the jostle the movement produced.  His blood rushed in his veins, pounding in his ears, and his head fell forward on his neck for a second, hanging like an exhausted racehorse’s, before he rallied and took control of his body again.  Or most of it, anyway: his cock had apparently decided Tony was back to being twenty years old, because it was filling and revving its engine, determined to hit the track once more.   _ Stop that,  _ Tony told it.   _ What do you think you’re doing?   _

His cock ignored him and throbbed impatiently where it was pressed tightly between their bodies.  Tony felt a brief spurt of panic and suppressed it harshly; there was no reason,  _ none,  _ to think that his body’s willingness to jump into this particular fray had  _ anything to do _ with what his heart was doing.  

No way.

Steve blinked and cocked his head.  His eyes flickered down Tony’s body, then back up again, and he raised his eyebrow, a delighted smile lighting up his eyes.

Tony shook his head at him.  “Ignore that,” he said apologetically, “I don’t feel like moving enough to do anything with it.”

Steve didn’t say anything, but his body went still, and he suddenly wasn’t meeting Tony’s eyes at all.

“You’re kidding,” Tony said blankly.  

But, shifting his hips, he found it was true: Steve was hardening once again, more slowly than before— _ dear God, I should  _ think  _ so!— _ but with none of the hesitance or half-staff-ness which would indicate it was temporary.  

“Technically, I didn’t  _ say  _ anything...” Steve started, but Tony waved him into silence with one languid hand.  

“Yeah, yeah, you’re very restrained, total gentleman, but if  _ you’re  _ game,  _ I’m  _ game—where do you want me?  I warn you, after all that, I’m too boneless to be much use this time, but—”

“Can you...”  Steve looked  _ deeply  _ embarrassed.  “I mean...”

Tony shook himself and pushed up on his elbows, rousing just enough to peer down into Steve’s face without moving enough to detach him.  He met Steve’s eyes and frowned in a friendly sort of way.  

“Buttercup.  Steve.   _ Cap.   _ I am naked in bed with you; we have both just finished—I counted this— _ six rounds _ of completely  _ extraordinary  _ fucking, and I am not such an idiot that I’m going to say  _ no  _ to one more when we are both  _ clearly  _ ready for it.  What I want now is for you to tell me how you want it, and I’m not going to—to  _ shame  _ you for answering a question that _ I asked.   _ Just spit it out, Cap.”

Steve turned deeply red, but he grinned and met Tony’s eyes again, which was really all Tony had been angling for.  “Can’t spit it out if I haven’t put it in my mouth yet,” he muttered. 

Tony snickered and dug a knuckle into Steve’s side before shifting enough to get a hand under himself, stroking his erection.  “Come onnn,” he said, mock-whining.  “How are we doing this, Big Guy?”

“Alright, alright already!  Uh, try—sit up?  No, all the way up—lean back—”  Steve guided him backwards, both of them easing around until Tony was upright, leaning back against Steve’s raised knees, essentially lounging on his dick.  Tony’s knees were up, too, now, rather than being tucked along Steve’s sides, and Steve wormed his arms through Tony’s legs so he had a more direct angle to lift Tony with.

Tony saw immediately how Steve was planning for this to work: Steve was going to pick him up and bring him down again, doing all the work, moving him where, when and how he wanted... 

...and Tony was going to take it.  

_ Good plan,  _ Tony thought, swallowing with a suddenly-dry throat.

It was a good angle, and it allowed Tony to sag bonelessly into Steve’s support.  It also left his hands free, which he took advantage of by gripping himself and stroking.  He moved his hand firmly, but too slowly to actually get himself off yet.

He was fucking this up; he knew that, dimly, in the little partition at the back of his mind which wasn’t sucked into the play of Steve’s skin over impossible muscles and the feeling of powerful thighs bracing against his back.  The tiny portion of his brain not currently obsessed with the taut abs and trim hips beneath him was aware that he was feeling too much, falling too deep into this.  He was going too fast, ripping off his masks with abandon, and he  _ needed  _ those, he needed those masks because there was no way this could work with just his face... but he couldn’t stop.  He couldn’t make himself slow down, much less step back, and all he could do now was tuck his head back and hope Steve didn’t notice.  

Steve groaned deep and shifted his hands, driving towards orgasm quickly; by now, Tony knew the signs.  Tony shifted his grip and sped up, gasping.  Tears were rolling down the sides of his face from the corners of his eyes, but that was alright; Steve cried during orgasm, too, that one time, it was no big deal.  Steve re-planted his feet and arched, driving into Tony hard and deep, and Tony cried out and finished, seed shooting out of him with surprising force, arching out and up before falling, messily, across Steve’s chest beneath him.

Still, Tony knew: that falling feeling as he came wasn’t just his cerebellum going haywire during orgasm.  His wings were melting, and he couldn’t look away from the sun.   

* * *

Tony woke up to some sort of odd grunting, a groaning sound almost like—

Oh.

Steve was spooned around him in the bed, arms wrapped around him possessively.  He was snuffling little distressed noises into Tony’s upturned left ear.  

It would have been cute if Tony hadn’t been so very hot and sweaty, but as it was, his buttcrack was itching and his skin was clammy.  Also, Steve was twitching faintly, lost in the throes of some kind of nightmare, and every once in awhile his legs would give a little kick, digging his surprisingly pointy toes into the back of Tony's calf. 

Tony grumbled to himself and tried to move out of Steve's grasp, but Steve clung like he was some kind of monkey—a bonobo, or something.  The noises he was making grew steadily higher and higher in pitch, approaching what Tony would almost call whimpers.  After a moment spent lying there, trying to figure out what Steve was doing there, and what had happened—five seconds after waking up was never Tony’s best time of the day—he was able to piece together reality.  

He winced.  A little bit the wince was for his epically bad decision-making skills the night before, but mostly it was because Steve's arms were tightening around him like a pair of warm, muscular boa constrictors.  It was kind of cute, but also Tony really needed to be able to breathe.

Suddenly Steve cried out, shoving against him with his feet while simultaneously pulling him in close with a painfully tight grip. Tony started to struggle, throwing his weight backwards to try to flip them both over.  He didn’t have quite the strength for that, but when he pulled one knee up, planting the foot squarely on the bed and pressing down with it sharply, he was able to pivot them both over and across Steve’s center of balance.   Steve grunted and fell onto his back, going sharply silent as Tony landed on top of him with all of his hundred and eighty pounds.   

It took a second of heavy breathing from both of them—Steve seemed to have woken up, but didn’t seem to have figured out what was going on, yet—but eventually, Steve opened his eyes and stirred.  “Sorry,” he said, panting into Tony's ear.  “Sorry.  Nightmare.”

“No problem,” Tony said automatically.  “What were you dreaming about?”  A second later, he winced.  That had maybe not been the  _ most  _ sensitive question he could have asked; after all,  _ Tony  _ was reluctant to share  _ his  _ nightmares...

Steve answered him, though.  “The heat,” he said, before stopping abruptly.  He shuddered, and started again.  “I—I was dreaming of the heat.” 

“The heat?” Tony asked.  He felt off-balanced, awkward at not quite getting it.  In his defense, he rationalized, he was only going on a couple of hours of sleep... 

He looked at the clock. 

Okay, four hours of sleep; same difference, right?

“From the...” Steve shook his head against Tony's back.  “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

Tony frowned thoughtfully up at the ceiling, feeling the hot puffs of Steve’s breath on his neck, the warmth pressed against his back.  The moment was so surreal, he felt like it was almost a fae deal, answering that question; was he sure he wanted to hear  _ what? _  What could Steve possibly have to tell him that could be so horrible at 3:30 in the morning?  _  You have a deal, Queen of Fairies. _

Aloud, he said, “It's fine.  What’s going on?”

Steve took a deep breath, a shaky one.  The kind of breath you took when you were trying to brace yourself for something unpleasant, but you weren't that steady to begin with.  “During Project Rebirth,” Steve said.  His voice sounded young somehow, more vulnerable by far than anything Tony had seen from him during the day.  “I mean  _ during  _ it.  In the machine, with all of the lights and the—the Vita-Rays.  It got hot—really,  _ really _ hot.  Felt like my skin was going to melt right off my bones.”

He fell silent, and Tony thought about what he had said.  He thought about what he had  _ not  _ said, too.  Thought about the find tremble of Steve's breath against the back of his neck.

He had said it was hot, but he hadn’t said that it burned.  He had said it was hot, but he hadn’t said it  _ hurt. _

Everyone  _ knew  _ it had hurt—the screaming was in all the reports, and anyway, it was common sense, given the physiological changes—but even now,  _ Steve hadn’t said it.   _

Tony’s heart clenched, and sank, and rose again, all the way up into his throat, making his voice thick and soft when he asked, “Was it scary?”

Steve’s breath game out in a warm rush—relief, Tony thought.  

“It was terrifying.”

The room was silent around them as they lay there, spooning close: two men working their way around the edges of a nightmare.  

Tony didn't like to think of his dad is somebody who hadn't cared what kind of trauma he caused on the way to greatness, but as Tony knew better than anyone, that was the kind of man Howard Stark had been.  Apparently, Steve had known it, too.  

First Tony had heard of _ that.   _ The only question now was, had Steve realized the implications of Howard’s behavior, or had he just forgiven Howard the damage he had done? 

“I bet the coverlet doesn’t help,” Tony said.  His voice came out louder than he had intended in the silent, too-still room.  “Makes things too hot,  _ and  _ too close.  Need something lighter...  Do you think I still have the Egyptian cotton?  It  _ is  _ January—”

“You don't have to do that, Tony.”  Steve’s voice sounded rough and tired, like he hadn’t gotten enough sleep—which, of course, he hadn't.  “I'll be fine.”

That was a dirty fucking lie and Tony knew it.  

He snorted, his breath stirring the sheet in a little fluttering puff.  “You want to try that again?  Because it sounded like you were just throwing away the only shred of comfort I have to offer you.  That would really hurt my feelings, Cap.”

The sarcasm was enough to get a laugh out of Steve, a weary sort of chuckle that nevertheless was better than what had come before it. He graciously waved his hand, indicating that, while Tony didn’t need to change the sheets he  _ could _ throw away the heavy coverlet which, really, they hadn't really needed anyway because Steve put out plenty of heat.   With that done, Tony settled back into place as the little spoon.  The position was familiar—Pepper had liked to be the big spoon, too—but disconcerting for all that: Steve was a lot  _ bigger  _ than Pepper. 

They lay pressed together, heads resting beside each other, breathing into each other's air, for a long time, but although they were still, neither one was falling asleep again.  Eventually, Tony stirred, turning over until he was face to face with Steve.  He ran his hand across Steve’s shoulders bracingly, smoothing down the firm muscles of his arm before switching sides and repeating the gesture. He stroked over and over, soothing first the left and then the right side, front and then back, until, slowly, Steve's breath eased into steadiness. 

With one last grumble Steve shifted onto his back, grabbing Tony into his arms as he went, wrapping him up like a giant supersoldier-based tortilla. Tony grumbled back at him but inside there was something warm and melting where his that should have been, and he turned his face away to hide the smile.  Or to protect Steve from beard burn...  It was probably that.  

Steve made a cheerful, content sort of noise before rubbing his face against Tony's cheek—Tony shivered for a reason that was, of course, completely unrelated—and the two of them finally drifted off to sleep once more.

* * *

In the morning, Steve was gone.

It wasn't really a shock; Steve, Tony knew, liked to go  for a run in the morning, often covering whole marathons at a time.  So it shouldn't have felt like a betrayal to wake up to an empty bed.

It did anyway.

It wasn't like Tony slept in; he wasn't waking up at six or anything, but he  _ was  _ up promptly by eight, and it didn't take him long to get ready for the day; he was usually in his lab by nine, at the latest.  Today, he used that time—okay, partially to shower and drink a cup of coffee, but  _ mostly _ to think about what exactly he thought he was doing, here.

This whole thing wasn't supposed to have been about  _ feelings.  _

At first, it was just supposed to be a scientific exploration.  Granted, that explanation hadn't held water after the first half dozen orgasms—and especially not after Tony's  _ reaction  _ to the first half dozen orgasms, which had been, okay,  _ dramatic— _ but he and Steve had mostly been playing around, right?  Scientific inquiry and sex, a great combo; no feelings required.  

And, okay, granted, going back for seconds had been...  Tony sighed.  It had been  _ stupid,  _ quite frankly; he should have known that, but he had  _ forgotten to measure Steve’s dick,  _ and now he had a damn  _ mold  _ of the thing, so it had been worth it, right?  But Tony had been sure when they started that second round that they had still, fundamentally, just been friends.  Who were having sex. Like a sort of side-benefit, really; there might be some sort of phrase about that status, how did it go again...?  

But friends with benefits was one thing, and “snuggling together all through the night, including comforting Steve when he awoke from nightmares,” was another.  

And, really, Tony’s emotions had been betraying him long before that.  He couldn’t pretend that the fondness, the gentleness, or the possessiveness were normal friendship traits, here; the problem with being so smart was that he saw through that particular lie far too quickly.  He had to own up to the bitter truth that he was—

“I”m going gay for Captain America.”

He pushed to his feet and paced around the kitchen, coffee cup in one hand and phone in the other.  Both hands were a little too pale around the knuckles.

The other end of the phone was silent for a long, long moment.  “Tony?  Do you know what  _ time  _ it is right now?!”  

Tony pulled back the phone and frowned at the digital display reading 8:37.  It matched the clock on the microwave  _ and  _ the stove, too, as well as the old-fashioned analog someone had hung over the refrigerator, so Tony was pretty sure that was right.  “It is 8:37, Butterfinger BB, and you usually get up at 4:30.”  He killed the rest of the coffee in his mug and put it in the sink, then changed his mind and took it back out again and refilled it from the pot.

“8:37 in  _ New York.” _  Rhodey’s voice was rough and irritated.  “I am in  _ Guam,  _ Tony.  President’s bodyguard?  Veteran’s benefit?  Any of this ringing a bell?”

Well,  _ now  _ it was.  “I may have heard something about it—anyway, as I said—”

Rhodey hung up on him.

Tony took his coffee and sulked his way down to the lab.

* * *

Tony was an engineer; he knew better than to rely on the theory when there was perfectly valid experimental data available.  Here was the experimental data: Tony had woken up this morning with a clenching heart because his bed partner was gone, and that was the cherry on the over-invested sundae and bad-decisions split.  He wasn't going to be able to look away or pretend it hadn't happened.  

It might have been more convenient if he could; while Tony had been with men before—a great ass was a great ass no matter which body it was attached to—it had been over a decade, and even then, he had been mostly sleeping around; he had never developed  _ feelings  _ like this for a man, before.  Well, okay,  _ Rhodey— _ but he had, in his own defense, been fifteen when that happened, and Rhodey had been the first attractive person close to his own age who had ever shown him kindness, so Tony had sort of chalked that one up to the inevitable confused gratitude and not thought about it too hard.  Besides which, that particular hero-worship-slash-crush had long since faded into a deeper, more reliable sort of trust that Tony wouldn’t trade for the world.  

But that meant that Tony didn’t really have any experience for how to do this, how to think about romance in the context of a man: he was trying it for the first time in his life at the age of forty-mumble, and that was...

He sipped his coffee.  

...That was too much for nine o’clock on a Monday, that was what that was.

“FRIDAY, open up the sales projections for the TI-80-WTFE at the current completion level.  I wanna know how many edges we need to file down before I can ship this thing off...”

* * *

He lasted thirty-seven minutes before stopping to rest his chin on his forearms, staring at the unintelligible mess which was his last attempt at writing code.  He tapped his fingers on his arm, one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, then raised his head and himself up abruptly, straightening on his stool.  “FRIDAY,” he ordered, “run efficiency stats on performance this morning.”

“You might not want me to do that, Boss.”  Friday's voice was both sympathetic and amused.  

He groaned and buried his head further in his arms, mumbling under his breath.

The AI was laughing at him.  This was not going to be fixed with coffee.

...Doughnuts, maybe?  The bakery up the block, the one in the basement of Grand Central, sold great doughnuts, and that would let him marinate in noise for a while, which sometimes helped.  He headed to the door of the lab, then stopped and at the last moment turned back like Lot’s wife, turned to salt by the sight of the broken-backed chair, still surrounded by used wipes sealed in plastic and a toppled-over bottle of antiseptic lube, the head hanging from the tortured leather like the victim of a particularly inept executioner.

“Dummy,” he started, then stopped with an under-the-breath curse.  

If he ordered Dummy to clean it up, Dummy would surely throw the samples away along with the chair.  And Tony was  _ still  _ curious, damn it all.  

At least  _ that  _ hadn’t changed.

* * *

Donuts made absolutely nothing better.  Which was unfair; donuts were essentially fat and carbohydrates, combined into their most deliciously digestible form, and  _ what  _ did that  _ not  _ help with?  

Tony’s  _ heart, _ apparently. 

In more ways than one, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t his cholesterol that was going to get him first, so he went ahead and had another.

(Also, they made him feel marginally better about his ass.  He _really_ hadn’t been thinking when he decided to walk _three blocks_ for the doughnuts.)  

No, he reflected as he made his way slowly back to the Tower, chewing his way through a half-dozen chocolate-glazed pieces of heaven, the problem was not the potential outing of his own bisexuality—one of the few truth bombs he had managed  _ not  _ to drop on the media—or the fallout that would come with “corrupting” the innocent Captain America image.  They were post-Ultron, now, and just over a year ago, Steve had dropped several billion dollars of government property into the Potomac; that ship had long since sailed out of the harbor, caught on fire, and sunk. 

The  _ problem  _ was that, having come to terms with his own feelings for Steve—okay, not  _ come to terms  _ come to terms, but at least  _ acknowledged— _ he  _ still had to work side by side with Steve.  _

So the  _ next  _ problem was, he had to find some way of hiding what he felt from Steve, because if Steve found out it was going to be  _ all kinds  _ of awkward, and he could not,  _ could not,  _ make things  _ weird. _

They fought robots alongside aliens for a living, things were already weird enough.

The snuggling that was the first problem; it wasn't going to take Steve long to figure out that that was out of character.  He had to find some way of making sure it wasn't going to happen again, some way of preventing the damage from being compounded...

The obvious answer was to just stop having sex with Steve.  That would take care of some of the problem; he had definitely been giving away a lot more of his unexpected feelings when their clothes were off.  Tony winced into his doughnut at the memory of rubbing his face tenderly along Steve’s; good Lord, had he really done that?  Terrible decision making, Stark, just terrible... 

Yeah, so ending the sex was probably step one.  Which sucked, because the sex was...

Tony paused in the doorway of Avengers Tower, shifting his weight deliberately from side to side just to be able to feel the ache and stretch of it.  

...the sex was  _ phenomenal,  _ and no two ways around it.  There was a lot a guy like Tony could do with a guy like Steve, if he had the time and permission...

...which he didn’t.  

So he should stop thinking about it.

Before he got an erection while standing in the entryway of his own building.

Once he had put a stop to the sex, it should kill most of the slip-ups, right?  Tony tossed the doughnut box at the trash while thinking it over.  He did have a tendency towards sort of incidental signs of affection, little shoulder bumps, or putting his hand on someone’s lower back to guide them...  Most recently, he had done that last one to Pepper at a fundraiser while they were dating, and she had whirled on him with a glare so hot he had felt scalded.  He had snatched his hand away again, but he knew that touchy-ness was a hallmark of his; he had better avoid doing things like...

He punched the elevator button and groaned aloud.  A memory of their last Avengers meeting had just sprung into his head, complete with a clear mental picture of Tony putting his hands comfortingly on Steve’s shoulders and gently rubbing the tension out.  Steve had turned his face up to Tony and beamed at him gratefully, and Tony had beamed back and patted him on the back.  

_ Possessively, _ he now realized.

The day after their first Science Adventure.

No  _ wonder  _ Natasha had been raising her eyebrows at them.

Other memories spooled out, too, as he took the elevator back to his floor: Joking with Steve in the Quinjet...  Walking in step with him as they passed through the corridors of the compound, that was no good...  And Tony was going to have to stop bumping Steve with his elbow whenever they shared an in-joke.

And, hell, his face had probably been giving some of it away, too.  It was just that Tony genuinely  _ liked  _ Steve, apart from all the  _ other  _ feelings, and some of his affection really  _ was  _ just platonic esteem.

Just... not all of it.

On the plus side, though, Tony was fairly sure that the attempts of scientific inquiry had been completely and thoroughly shredded at this point, so it was possible that Steve would assume that their... relations... were concluded.  He would stop having sex with Tony, and Tony would stop romanticizing Steve, and that would probably be the ideal solution.  It seemed pretty likely that that was what would happen, too.

With his problem now solved, Tony was in a pretty good mood as he headed back to the tower and prepared to work out the kinks in the TI-80-WTFE.

* * *

“I think we should do it again,” Steve said from  _ directly behind him  _ as he sat eating a snack in the kitchen.

Tony jumped.  He had been balancing on one of the kitchen stools, keeping it up on one leg while he ate some of Clint’s pancake-and-sausage rolls (dipped in maple syrup), and when Steve spoke from behind him in the door of the kitchen, Tony yelped and flailed, overbalancing and falling, along with the stool, to the ground.  His pancake-and-sausage roll slipped out of his hand, flying backwards as he fell, and smacked Steve right in the face before dropping to the floor with a splat. Tony fell right on his ass, hitting hard.  

That was going to sting for  _ days.   _ His ass, and his pride.

“Uh.  Sorry?  I mean—Here, let me help you up—”  Steve came into the room properly and reached out a hand to Tony, bringing him to his feet.  “Sorry, Tony; I didn’t mean to startle you.”  He met Tony’s eyes squarely, which was a step above what  _ Tony  _ was feeling up to right now.  

“No problem; it happens.  What did you—”

That was the exactly moment when Tony processed what Steve had actually  _ said.   _ His breath caught in his throat and he stared, jaw working soundlessly, like he needed to chew the thing over before he could swallow it. 

He let out a shaky sort of laugh.  “What... did you mean?” he asked uncertainly, staring.  Steve was  _ probably  _ not saying what he thought Steve was saying, and if he  _ was  _ saying what Tony thought he was saying, that was  _ really, really bad.   _

Steve swallowed; Tony could see his Adam’s apple bob.  When he spoke, his voice came out resolute: “I meant the having sex,” he said.  “We should do it again.”

There was a moment of silence while Tony’s heart took off like a formula one car, tires metaphorically squealing and letting off smoke.  Tony didn’t say anything—didn’t dare—and Steve answered his silence by adding, “We were really good at it.”

Tony still didn’t say anything.  It really seemed best that way.

Steve shook his head, impatient with the lack of response.  He stepped into Tony’s space and put his hand on Tony’s hip, leaning in to murmur in Tony’s ear, and oh, God, Tony could feel his breath warm on his cheek, and his hands felt a million degrees on his hip and shoulder...  

“We were really good  _ together,  _ Tony.  Let us be together again.” 

Tony shivered at the tickle of Steve’s words in his ear, shuddered under the feel of that hand on his hip.  His mind filled with images from the last time they were together, all golden skin and sweatdrops.  Tony remembered the way Steve had shaken under his hands as he fucked him with the pH probe, and the feeling of being taken, being filled to the brim, that he had experienced while riding Steve’s cock.  

_ This is a bad idea.   _

And it was, it was  _ such  _ a bad idea.  This was the kind of idea that led to blurred lines, and the moment when Tony blurted out  _ I love you  _ just because Steve had pushed inside him was practically inevitable if he agreed to this.  It wasn’t just Tony’s dignity at stake—although it was, it  _ absolutely  _ was, Tony was going to have to bury himself in a vault and seal it with industrial-grade epoxy if Steve ever figured it out—but it was also the risk to  _ the team.   _

The Avengers was—well, they had had their problems, and Tony wasn’t as active on the team as he had been, and there were real concerns over their jurisdiction and authorization in international matters now that SHIELD was gone, but...  The Avengers were the best thing Tony had ever done with his life, and he couldn’t,  _ could not,  _ risk losing them.  He couldn’t be the sand that worked its way into the gears, couldn’t be the fly found dead in the ointment...  If Steve found out what Tony felt for him, there was a zero percent chance that he would be okay with that, and  _ that  _ meant Tony was going to have to quit the team.

And Tony couldn’t stand to quit the team.  His heart had been through so much already; it couldn’t take that, too.

But Steve’s eyes were very blue, and Steve’s chest was very broad; his waist was narrow, his legs were long, and, as usual, he felt incredibly, impossibly hot.  Feverishly hot, but Tony’s brain was the one shorting out...

No.  He couldn’t do it.  Tony took in a breath—too shaky, but maybe Steve wouldn’t notice his weakness—and said—

“Sure.  Ten o’clock okay?”

_ God fucking DAMN it!!! _

* * *

After that, he went reckless.  He covered his heart with armor made of snark—no real change there—and when Steve showed up at his room at ten—five minutes early, actually—Tony dragged him in like a whirlwind, dragging his pants open, dropping to his knees, and sucking Steve down as far as he could, hard and fast.  

Steve lasted less than a minute the first time, going off before Tony had even found the limits of how deep he could take it.  Tony pulled off and deliberately let the jism shoot onto his face, instead of down his throat, because he still hadn’t done that micro-analysis and he didn’t want to accidentally give himself indigestion or anything. 

Steve groaned and smeared it around, too, smudging it across the bridge of Tony’s nose and down over his cheeks and lips.  Which was pretty great. 

Tony responded by going down again, slower this time but still intense, working his hand up to hold tight around the part of the shaft he hadn’t been able to swallow.  Steve moaned, and clung to the door, hands scrabbling at the wood, and actually managed to last a whole four minutes.  When Steve finished this time, Tony aimed him lower, and the come streaked across his throat and upper chest, just inches from where the arc reactor used to be.  Steve dragged streaks of it downwards with his fingertips, painting it in a circle on Tony’s chest.

Tony smiled, and tried not to make any noise that would let on his heart was breaking.  

After that, they moved to the bed.  Tony was still too sore for anal, but Steve crawled on top of him and lined them up together, wrapping one giant hand around both of their lengths and working them off together.  Tony gagged himself by taking large mouthfuls of Steve’s shoulders and arms into his mouth, leaving dark half-circular bite-marks on that would be gone by morning and letting his moans be squandered into the skin.  Steve didn’t seem to mind.

When they were done, Steve rolled around him big-spoon style again and nudged his knee up behind Tony’s, and pressed grateful kisses against Tony’s upturned temple and ear.  Tony smiled helplessly into the pillow, his heart beating far too fast at the intimacy.

Tony took one minute, sixty seconds, to enjoy it.  He pretended everything was different, that Steve loved him, that they weren’t just friends with benefits, that he had told Steve how he felt and it hadn’t all ended in disaster...  He let the still-sweaty body behind him nuzzle close, let himself believe that Steve wasn’t just his friend, he was his husband, and they had just had fabulous reunion sex after Steve had gotten home from a trip...  Tony had always wanted to get married, even as he had known he would be a terrible decision for whomever that future spouse was to make...

He still let himself pretend.  For one minute.

Then he sighed, and tipped his head back towards Steve.  “You should probably go back to your room,” he said.  “I know you get up at soldier’s hours.”

Steve froze.  “Oh,” he stuttered.  “Right.  Of course—you’re right.  I’ll just, uhhh—”

Tony frowned, and turned a little more.  “Steve?”

Steve was flushed a beautiful shade of red.  “I was actually hoping for one more, first,” he admitted.

Tony thought about it.  “Well...  I could be persuaded...”

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Valmasy and Buhfly, as always, for quick and enthusiastic beta work!

 

Tony didn’t sleep that night.  

He dozed, a little bit, after Steve had left; that was another two orgasms later, but once Steve had gotten his fourth, frotting between Tony’s thighs from behind with little huffs of breath while his teeth dug into Tony shoulder, it had been enough time that Tony had been firming up again, and it had been easy for Steve to talk him into enduring a hand job, and after  _ that  _ it had only been polite to let Steve finish on his chest.  At that point, Tony had been covered in swirls, streaks, and ribbons of come, and Steve had spent a long moment staring at Tony, apparently admiring his—their—work, before muttering his thanks and jerkily getting dressed again.  

But Tony couldn’t really sleep after that, and the half-awake daze he fell into after Steve left—disturbingly reminiscent of a depression nap, but Tony was determinedly not looking too closely—broke like a soap bubble after about half an hour.  Tony firmly gave up,  _ got  _ up, and headed down to the lab.  

After all, he  _ still  _ had samples he wanted to analyze.

* * *

It took a couple of hours, all told, plus FRIDAY’s processing time.  He spent the first seventy-five minutes feeding samples into the analyzers—thankfully, the bots loaded his slides for him; he would have gone mad trying to get the slide-covers in place with his fingers shaking from sleep deprivation—and the last fifty minutes setting parameters for the statistical analysis.  He finished it up with a reminder to FRIDAY not to waste too much processing power on the workup, and also that she was supposed to have the new specs for War Machine ready for him the next morning, and then tottered upstairs, still faintly limping, to have a mug of hot chocolate.

Natasha was in the kitchen when he got there, loading what looked like syrup, blackberries, and ice cream into the blender.  

Tony raised his eyebrows at her; she flicked a warning glance back at him.  

“Don’t,” she said, hitting blend, and he knew better than to try to talk over the cacophony of the whirring blender.

By the time it had stopped, he had decided it was better if he didn’t ask, so instead he just held out another glass to her with a hopeful expression.  She relented and popped a straw in the glass before pouring him some of her milkshake.

Which was  _ strong as hell,  _ holy shit!  “Gackkk!” he choked, “what the hell did you  _ put  _ in this?!”

She shrugged, but he could tell she was amused at his reaction.  “Vodka, vanilla ice cream, berries....  Some blackhaus.”

He took another, more cautious, drink.  It was hard to be cautious with a milkshake, though, and he still wound up with a pretty good mouthful.  When he could feel his tongue again, he asked, “What  _ kind  _ of vodka?”

She actually smiled, topping off her cup—it was already half-empty—and putting the rest of the mix in the freezer.  “Balkan vodka.”  She shrugged and changed the subject.  “Why are you awake?”

“What, it’s okay for  _ you  _ to ask, but not me?  And anyway, aren’t you the Great Interrogator?  Figure it out.”  Tony was aware he was being petulant, but he couldn’t quite stop himself.  He folded into one of the bar stools, waved Natasha into another as an apology, and wished he could fucking sleep.

Nat sat with a hum, thinking as she took him up on the invitation.  “Was the sex that bad?”

Tony choked on his milkshake.  “No!  No, it was  _ not— _ the sex was not bad.  The sex was good.”  He paused, thinking about it.  “Really,  _ really  _ good.”

Natasha visibly considered whether or not she wanted to hear it, but then took a bracing swig of her drink and leaned forward, obviously listening, so Tony went on.  

“You ever have sex with someone, and it’s like you’re not—not  _ in  _ you?  Not like that, don’t give me that face—okay, it’s a  _ little  _ like that, but more...  I have these voices in my head, and for once I just... didn’t have to listen to them.  They all just  _ shut up— _ or, some of them, they  _ didn’t  _ shut up, but they also just... didn’t matter anymore.  Not... not anymore.”

Natasha’s eyes were slowly widening.  She raised her glass to take a sip, but never did, and left it hanging, distracted, in front of her face.

“Fucking Steve...”  Tony shook his head.  “It was like  _ I  _ didn’t matter.  Like I could just watch him go off over and over again, for decades, and just never get tired of it, never even think about my own dick.”  He paused, considering that idea.  “Might make it hard to be Iron Man, but...”

“I don’t know, Tony, I think Steve might be into that.”  Natasha killed the deadpan delivery, then followed it up with a long, pointed slurp of the purple monstrosity that was going to quickly get the both schnockered.

Tony laughed, more bitterly than he had intended.  “I’m averaging about six orgasms a time for the guy, I think he’d be into just about anything that did that.”

Nat pursed her lips around her straw, regarding him critically.  “So you think he’s using you for sex?”

“What?  No!”

“That’s what it sounds like.”

“That is not what I said.”

“That’s what it  _ sounds  _ like you said—”

“I do not think he’s using me for sex!  I just think...”  

Tony stopped shouting and let his voice trail off.  

What he  _ actually  _ thought was that Steve was enjoying the—non-usury, perfectly consensual!—sex, but didn’t reciprocate Tony’s  _ feelings, _ and Tony wouldn’t have voiced that opinion even if he  _ did  _ want Nat to tell Steve, because it basically made it sound like Tony’s testicles were so gone they were heading away on rollerskates.  

Natasha’s straw made a guttering, slurping noise as she tried to suck up the dregs of her drink.  She pulled it out of the cup, stole Tony’s drink, stuck it in, and started sipping again.  

Then paused under his glare.  “What?” she asked.  “You were wasting it.”

“I was answering the—!  Stop it, give me that back!”  They wrestled good-naturedly for it—you could tell it was good-natured, because no one got stabbed or targeted by the fire suppression systems—and wound up sharing, two straws stuck in the booze-shake, faces close together like teenagers about to make out, giggling madly all the while.

* * *

They lasted three more blessed days before anything went wrong.  Steve and Tony worked together—even when Nat went back up to the Compound, Steve for some  _ mysterious reason  _ did not—and talked, ate and slept and fucked. Steve proved cheerfully willing to suck Tony’s dick, a delightful discovery that led immediately into the follow-up discovery that Steve could come from sucking cock.  Steve looked about as blown-away by that one as Tony was; Tony suspected that, whatever else his experience was, Steve hadn’t been with many men, or he would have found out sooner.  Lucky Tony that he hadn’t been, Tony guessed.

The second day after Tony’s talk with Nat, the board elected to go forward with TI-80-WTFE production, and Tony machined himself up a real sex-frame in celebration.  He talked Steve into letting himself be tied to it—it took very little talking; Steve was pretty willing to do whatever Tony wanted, by this point—and then started getting out the clamps.  It turned out that there were very few places on Steve’s body that he could stick a clamp and  _ not  _ produce an orgasm, and none that would not at least produce a groan and an erection.  The nipples, as Tony had long suspected they would, proved to be the most reliable; all Tony had to do was fan his fingers over the hard little nubs, and Steve would beg and plead beneath him.  

It was intoxicating.  Tony had spent most of his thirties discovering the range on this, so he actually had authority when he said it: fucking Steve was the most addictive drug in the world.  

The third day, Steve found out about Tony’s morning meeting—with the military rep, about the new body armor for guys in Iraq, at nine o’clock sharp; but it was in California, which meant Tony had to leave by six in order to make it in time.  Steve showed up sitting on the hood of the car when Tony headed to the garage, followed by Happy with his bags.  

Tony stopped dead, and stared.

Steve was not in the Captain America armor.  Steve was in skin-tight jeans and a t-shirt and spread out like a pin-up, and the look in his eye said he knew  _ exactly  _ how good he looked, too.  

“Uh,” Tony said suavely.  “Good morning?”

Steve gave him a shit-kicking little grin.  “It is now,” he said.  “Give me a ride to the airport?”

Tony’s eyebrows hit the roof.  “Why do you need a ride to the airport?”

“Hard to join you on the plane, Tony, if I can’t get to the airport.”

“Annnnd why are you joining me on the plane...?”

Steve’s grin widened.  “What would you say if I told you that there was a block of HYDRA-based extremists in Malibu and I needed to infiltrate them?”

It was a ploy.  It was  _ obviously  _ a ploy, it was an  _ extremely unsubtle  _ ploy,  _ Happy Hogan  _ probably saw through this fucking ploy.  

It was  _ working, _ though.  

Steve’s shirt was  _ really  _ tight...  

Tony remembered the high-pitched whimper that had come from a single fingernail digging into a nipple, and broke like South Fork Dam.

* * *

Happy locked himself in with the pilot, and they had sex on the plane.

A  _ lot.   _ Of sex.  On the plane.

* * *

When Tony got out of his meeting it was around noon, California time, which meant it was around three New York time and he was starving.  He called Steve to get lunch with him, but there was no response.  He frowned down at his phone as it went to voicemail.  “That’s.... Unusual...”  He hesitated for a few seconds, tapping at the frame with his thumb in idle thought, but in the end decided to go for it: “FRIDAY, lojack Cap.”

“Captain Rogers is currently travelling north along the Pacific Coast Highway.”

Tony shifted his weight from his left side to his right.  “Destination, FRIDAY.”  

“Destination unknown from current information.  Sorry, Boss; he’s not using a company car.”

Between Steve and Tony, they had close to fifty vehicles still available to their use in Malibu, despite Tony no longer having the mansion here; they ranged from an old, plumber-style van to a sexy motorcycle to the Avengers-enhanced and -customized Bugatti Veyron, so there was no reason,  _ none,  _ for Steve to be using an anonymous car.  

Tony sighed.  “FRIDAY, call a suit.”

“Got it, Boss!” 

“Not the firefighter suit,” he clarified hastily, remembering the limited selection of models he still stored here in Malibu.  “One of the ones with guns.  I’m not sure if this is a tail or a kidnapping, but either way, Cap’s going to need backup.”

* * *

It  _ was  _ a tail.  Steve, it turned out, had waited until the men he knew were associated with the HYDRA cell, which shockingly turned out to be _ not made up,  _ got into their van, and then he had casually climbed on top and held on as they took the PCH at reckless speeds, because  _ of course he had. _

Tony got there right as the shooting started; afterward, he flew Steve back to the hotel and they had victory sex.  

Steve damn near attacked him as soon as the door closed behind them, ripping at panels on his suit just enough to have access while still leaving most of it on.  Tony remembered what Steve had said about not wanting to hurt him, put it together with fact that the suit meant Steve  _ couldn’t  _ hurt him too badly, and threw himself down on the bed on his back, reeling Steve in with armored legs around his shoulders.  Steve groaned, and put his weight into it, but it wasn’t enough to overpower the suit, and Tony controlled the pace, drawing them both out slow and steady until Steve was sweating, panting and pleading for Tony to let him thrust harder, let him  _ move,  _ let him  _ come— _

Tony groaned, and hydraulics whined, and Steve got to thrust at exactly the pace Tony allowed him to thrust.

Tony didn’t have to worry about slipping, either.  Steve couldn’t see his face through the helmet.

* * *

They did not have sex on the airplane back, because it left at ten o’clock California time, and which meant they got in at five in the morning.  Instead, they napped; there were pull-out beds in the jet, it was fairly comfortable.

Somewhere over Nebraska, Tony woke to find Steve resting half on top of him, arms twitching in his sleep.  A blanket, the kind the stewardesses—they didn’t call them that any more, right?—tended to throw on top of Tony whenever he slowed down long enough for them to aim, was tangled on top of their legs.  If one of the totally-not-stewardesses—shit, what were they called now?—if one of those people had taken a photo, Tony was going to find them and murder them, he decided bleerily. 

Then his brain came back on line, and he added it together: Steve was asleep, under a blanket, and twitching.  Hell,  _ Tony  _ was sweating, and he didn’t have Howard Stark-induced PTSD.  

Well, okay...  He  _ did,  _ but...

Tony shifted to the side, reaching out to grab the blanket.  It was too far, just an inch or two out of reach, although Tony strained for it.  Falling short, he fell back, glaring at the elusive fabric.  He wiggled his toes up and down for a minute, then looked up near his head.  There, there was a small table off to the side with a pair of used Old Fashioned glasses, Steve’s sketchbook, and a pen; Tony snagged the pen, inserted it under the blanket, and finally managed to get a good enough grip to hurl the thing, flapping pathetically, across the plane.

Steve stopped twitching immediately.

Tony lay back in a slump, tension leaking out of him as he watched Steve sleep.  As if on its own, his hand came up, wrapping around Steve’s shoulders enough to play with the short buzz of hair at the back of Steve’s neck.  Back and forth, back and forth...  There was something about the texture of fine, soft, hair under his fingers that was just so... mm, soothing...

He needed to sleep, and he knew it, but he didn’t  _ want  _ to.  There was something about the moment that felt secret, private.  Precious.  Going back to sleep would mean turning his back on that, would mean ignoring the impossible fact which was  _ Steve, in his lap.   _ Tony whimpered and bit his own lower lip, his heart feeling full and fragile, both at the same time.  Steve was just...  _ Steve,  _ was the thing; just Steve, only Steve, the Steve-iest Steve in the world, and here he was, just out  _ cold  _ on Tony’s lap, and that was...

Tony brushed his thumb across Steve’s buzz again, shook his head slowly back and forth, and didn’t otherwise move.  His eyelids were heavy, but it was a long time before he fell back asleep.

* * *

He didn’t wake up immediately when he got to New York; Steve did, though, and according to Happy later, Steve had cheerfully just picked Tony up, bundling him in the discarded blanket, and carried him to the car.  

Tony  _ did  _ wake up when a taxi honked from too-close behind them before buzzing around them in a dopplaring rage.  So, typical New York, basically.  “Urgh,” he grumbled, hand going to his neck which ached strangely, “Whasgoanon?”

“Hmm?”  Steve looked away from the tinted window of the car.  “Oh.  On the way back from the airport, don’t worry about it.”

“Urrrgh,” Tony repeated.  “Suit?”

Steve turned his face to the outside again.  “At your feet.  Go back to sleep, Tony.”

“Ur-hrgh,” Tony agreed, and did. 

Steve carried him inside—thankfully, from the restricted portion of the garage, so no one saw it—and up the back elevator to the penthouse.  He tucked Tony into bed—Tony came briefly awake, and remembered making inviting noises, but they may have been too indistinct for Steve to pick up on his intent, because Steve got up and left.  

Tony ordered FRIDAY to make him a coffee, and then promptly fell back asleep for three more hours before it had even finished brewing.

* * *

“Good morning, boss!  It’s 10:23 am here in New York, and the weather is just so lovely it reminds me of home.”

Given FRIDAY’s accent, that probably meant it was gray and gloomy.  One of these days, Tony was going to remember to stop programming sarcasm into his AI’s.

No, he wasn’t.

“I have finished progress reports on the War Machine armor for you, and in five minutes I’ll have the final stats on Cap’s sexual performance, as well.”

Tony scrubbed at his face and got up, hunting up jeans and t-shirt.  “Order me some coffee and pastries,” he said, digging through the closet because  _ someone  _ kept hiding the comfortable stuff all the way at the back, “and cue up the War Machine stats.  Hold the Cap stuff—and, Jesus, never call it that again—until after I’m done with the suit, would you?  Call it my motivation.”

“Yes, boss.  Cronuts and coffee are on their way; should I send them to the workshop?”

“Nah, up here is fine.”  He tugged the shirt down over his stomach, and layered on Rhodey’s MIT sweatshirt just because he could.  “I’m having a lazy day, FRIDAY.  Let’s work from home.”

The bedroom in the penthouse was fairly straightforward—clothes and a bed, nothing fancy—but the Nook room, where Tony almost never went, was right next door.  It was lined with books like a library; Tony wasn’t sure what most of them were, but every time he had gotten up in the middle of the night and grabbed one at random, that book had turned out to be hilarious, so he was pretty sure JARVIS had ordered it up as a cornucopia of funniest best-sellers.  There was also a large, flat table in there, which Tony used now for old-school drafting because the holographics didn’t work in the Nook, and a set of two chairs and a couch, all heavily padded in warm brown leather.  The best thing about the Nook room, though, was the window: a solid pane of glass, warmed by invisibly thin wires running through it, looking out over the city and with a deep, wide, comfortable window seat beneath it.  Tony could camp all day in that window seat, and had, and was planning to again today because jetlag was a solid gold  _ bitch. _

FRIDAY splayed out the specs for his armor on a tablet for him, and he got to work.  

There were a lot of characteristics of “good” body armor; flexibility, durability, resistance to different types of force (blunt versus pointed, for example), insulation (such as from electrical charge, or heat) and also breathability (so that the person inside didn’t cook themselves)...  Stark Industries had been leading the world in personal body armor long before Iron Man because their bulletproof vests were lighter, more breathable, but still stronger and more fully-covering (in case of shrapnel, although even Stark armor could only do so much) than anyone else’s had been.  

But the Suits were a different issue.  The basic material used in both Suits was a gold-titanium alloy—the War Machine suit was just coated on top with carbon nanotubes—and the AuTi matrix was a brilliant material when it came to both the icing problem (which had inspired its use in the first place) and the magnetism issue (because Tony had woken up from a nightmare where he was captured by a giant electromagnet and hung suspended like a scruffed kitten while a villain monologued for twenty minutes, and he was  _ not going to go through that in real life).  _

But the AuTi  _ was  _ vulnerable to electricity.

The Iron Man suit was okay; not great, but the paint layer on top had been chosen to cut a lot of the conductivity.  The problem with the War Machine suit was the nanotubes—the carbon nanotube coating Tony had added to Rhodey’s armor for the extra stopping power.  Nowadays he could apply it as a layer of nanotube paint, but back when he had first started this, Tony had had to grow the tubes directly onto the armor—reason number three hundred fifty-five why the military was  _ never  _ going to be able to properly replicate Tony’s work.  

Carbon nanotubes were incredible strong, more than a hundred times stronger than steel, and Tony was a big fan of anything that would keep impacts away from his Rhodeybear, but they conducted electricity like a bitch—they were going to revolutionize electronics, but in the meantime they were making Tony’s buddy vulnerable to tasers.  The simple solution was to put a coat of insulating paint over the nanotubes, but they didn’t take the coating very well.  In the old days, they hadn’t taken the coating at all, but even now, the paint would fleck and chip, thereby making itself useless.  

So the new option was to make a new coating for War Machine, a matrix with the carbon nanotubes spaced far enough apart that they would still catch impacts, while being too far to pass charges to each other, kind of like protective cell towers: Tony wanted to make all the “signals” more shitty.  In between each nanotube, he would have a some kind of insulating material that kept out heat and charge.  

The problem he was having was finding the right  _ kind  _ of intermixed material, and also the right  _ proportions  _ of each ingredient.  There were a lot of possibilities, and FRIDAY had been running the numbers on them for days; she had finally gotten it down to four main combinations.  

Tony was comparing the last two (effects on the modular assembly, resistance to impact, style...) when Steve burst into the Nook.

He stopped short when he saw Tony look up; the look on Tony’s face, maybe, or possibly the outfit—Tony didn’t tend to go casual very often these days, because he was so frequently being called to meetings with officials about the five thousand things that had gone wrong with Ultron.  And he did look pretty damned good in jeans and a t-shirt...

Steve swallowed.  “You busy?” he asked as if he hadn’t just burst in clearly ready to interrupt Tony no matter  _ what  _ Tony was doing at the time.

Tony blinked, then tossed the tablet away.  Steve looked just as good in t-shirt and jeans as Tony did, after all.  Better, actually.  More... strain-y.  

“Not anymore; what’s up?”

“What’s up,” Steve repeated incredulously.  He swallowed back some strong emotion and strode forward, standing in front of Tony with his arms crossed over his chest.  “The data,” he said, then tipped his head to the side and elaborated, “from our... project.  With the—in your workshop.  That data.”  

“Yeah,” Tony said, “Haven’t looked at it yet.”

Steve’s stare became incredulous.

“I was saving it for later,” Tony said defensively.  “What?  What did you see?  FRIDAY—”

“FRIDAY,” Steve interrupted, “play the video I was just reviewing, please.”

“ _ What _ video?!”

“Data set shared with Captain Rogers,” FRIDAY broke in, “contained graphical and numerical analyses under the parameters you set, as well as all video and audio footage of the incidents.”

“Oh.”  Tony shifted in his window seat.  “That video.”

In his hands, the War Machine specs cleared themselves, and a video popped up already full-screened between his thumbs.

It was from the first time, Tony saw immediately; he recognized the chair and the lack of stirrups.  Steve-on-the-screen waved goodbye as he left the lab, and Tony-on-the-screen turned, touching the chair with—Tony in real life winced—shaking, reverent hands.  He smoothed the leather of the chair back carefully—it had still been warm, Tony remembered now, trying to think over the roaring in his ears—and his eyes shut.  The tablet’s speakers were terrible, but they were more than adequate to capture the purr of a zipper going down, the frantic gasps of a desperate man, the broken whisper of  _ “Steve—!”  _ that Tony hadn’t even known he had given as he broke and came all over the leather where Steve had so recently been sitting.

In the Nook, there was silence.  

Hand shaking, Tony started to fumble around the back of the tablet for the power switch—

“Next video,” Steve ordered.

“Oh,  _ God.”   _

Tony was going to  _ barf. _

The next video was from the next session, a blisteringly hot ten seconds of Steve failing to writhe against the restraints and the plunge of the pH probe inside of him.  Ten seconds of gleaming abs and glistening pecs and strained moans, and if you weren’t looking in the right place you wouldn’t even see the aching, yearning expression on Tony’s face, an expression that whipped away the second Steve looked like he might be coming back to himself—

“Next.  Video.”

Tony woke in the middle of the night, and Steve was stirring restlessly against the sheets, and the look on Tony’s face was so betrayingly  _ tender,  _ there would be no denying this,  _ none— _

“Last one, FRIDAY; the one I was looking at before I asked you that question.”

“No,” Tony interrupted.  “You’ve made your point.  I—”

What the hell could he even  _ say?   _ The humiliation washed over him, a wave higher than even his breakwater could handle.  He let his head thunk back against the frame of the window seat in resignation.

“I’m sorry, Steve.  I know it’s not...” He shut his eyes, unable to look at the outraged expression on Steve’s face.  “I know you’re not... on the same wavelength,” he managed, “and I never expected—look, you’re  _ you,  _ alright?  And I  _ know  _ that, I  _ do,  _ I just—getting my hands on that?”  He opened his eyes, praying,  _ willing  _ Steve to understand.  “Even knowing it was going to end badly?  Even knowing I was going to break my heart, it was—worth it, alright, and—I never tried to trap you!  There was no expectation here that you would feel the same way!  There’s no pressure!  But I just...”

His eyes fell to the screen again, to the sight of a heartbreakingly fragile look spasming across his own aging face.

“...I wanted to touch it,” he finished.  “I knew I couldn’t  _ hold  _ it.  But I wanted to touch it, at least.  For a while.”

Steve was still staring at him with... outrage?  Maybe  _ outrage  _ wasn’t quite the right word, but there was definitely some incredulity.  

“Are you  _ shitting me?”  _  Then Steve’s face closed off, and he shook his head.  “C’mon, move over,” he ordered, waving a hand at Tony’s knees on the window seat until Tony moved them aside, sitting up straight so that Steve could sit down next to him.  He shot Steve a squirrelly look as Steve sat, also upright and with his feet planted squarely, but close enough to Tony that Tony could feel the brush of his broad shoulder pressing against him.

“Steve?”

Tony didn’t like to sound vulnerable; Tony actually  _ hated  _ to sound vulnerable.  But his heart was on the table, here, and what was worse was, they both knew it.  

And Steve had the metaphorical equivalent of Thor’s hammer.

Steve was...

...Steve was taking Tony’s hand in his.  

Tony blinked down stupidly at the sight of Steve’s strong fingers intertwining with his own.  The hands, Tony couldn’t help but notice, were one of the first places Tony showed his age: they were wrinkled, the knucklebones standing out sharply.  The skin was both thin and callused, at the same time, and the skin was dusky and golden.  But Steve didn’t seem to notice the difference between them being highlighted; he smiled and bounced their hands a little, instead.  It was a very  _ affectionate  _ sort of gesture from a man who might shortly be bashing Tony’s face in, Tony couldn’t help but think.

Steve cleared his throat and squared his shoulders; here it came...

“Play video,” Steve said firmly.  

What?

The tablet lit under his other hand again, and this time the last video moved forward.  It was shockingly pornographic, starting with a close-up of Tony’s face and then panning out quickly, showing that Tony was wearing that wide-eyed, blissed-out, hopelessly-in-love expression while Steve pounded him from behind, that first time they had come up to Tony’s bedroom, right after breaking the chair.  Steve hadn’t liked being behind him, Tony remembered, but  _ he  _ had fucking loved it, and look at that, there it was, all over his face in the video that FRIDAY was helpfully playing.  Thanks, FRIDAY.  One reprogramming coming up, ASAP.  

Well, at least Steve didn’t seem to be quite as mad as Tony had been expecting...

“Stop video,” Steve ordered, and the playback paused in mid-thrust.  On screen, Tony’s head was sunk towards the blanket like an exhausted racehorse while Steve leaned over him, and Tony was torn between destroying this video forever and setting this frame of it as his lockscreen.

Steve must have caught the thought, because he snorted.  “You’re looking at the wrong thing,” he told Tony, his voice very patient for a man who Tony would really have expected to be halfway out the door by now.  “Stop looking at your face.”

Tony’s eyes immediately crossed.

_ Steve’s  _ eyes immediately  _ rolled.   _

“Stop looking at your face,” he repeated, “and look at mine.  In the video.”  

Tony blinked, then dropped his eyes to the screen again.  The screen was not large, but it was still big enough to show Steve’s eyes were closed, clenched against some strong emotion; his mouth was dragging down and sideways, contorting his expression.  Tony blinked and leaned in closer; it almost looked like Steve had some kind of  _ wetness  _ near his eyes, but that couldn’t be—

“Replay video,” Steve ordered softly, and it started over again.

It was like watching a whole different scene.  Tony’s eyes shifted from his own face at the beginning to Steve’s as it panned back, and he watched, fascinated, as a familiar series of expressions played out before him: joy first, before anything else; the bliss of Steve sinking into Tony, the satisfaction of using his muscles to pleasure another human being; then the tinge of bitterness, the realization that  _ this won’t last, this can’t last, what happens when he knows?!,  _ and then the ache, the torture and twisting, because as good as it felt, as good as it  _ was,  _ there was no escaping the knowledge that it would, eventually, come to an end—

“Pause video,” Tony croaked.

He jerked his eyes up to Steve beside him.  

He had to try twice to get any words out.  “Y—I— _ You?!” _

Steve laughed, slightly hysterical.  “Me,” he assured Tony.  “God, Tony, I’ve been in love with you since two days after we met!  At first I didn’t even think you’d notice, and then once it occurred to me you might, it seemed—”  His eyes darted away.  “Seemed pretty obvious you wouldn’t be too impressed,” he finished softly.  

“What?  What.  Steve, no!”

“Well, come on!  You’re  _ Tony Stark,  _ you do the most  _ amazing things— _ and then we were fighting, all the time, and  _ then,  _ even when we were fucking, you were so damn clear that was all it was—!”

Steve broke off in genuine distress, the tiny line that lived between his eyebrows grown up to a full-blown wrinkle.  

“I can’t believe this,” Tony said.  “I can’t  _ believe  _ this, I can’t believe  _ you!   _ You let me think—when all this time—?!”

_ “Two days _ after we met.  Two  _ hours  _ after we saved Manhattan.  You fell out of that—that  _ damn  _ portal, and we got  _ shwarma,  _ and afterwards, you remember, they wouldn’t let you pay—”

“That was so stupid!  I’m Tony Stark, I fucking have money!  Why wouldn’t they—?”

“—so instead you used the picture of their son on the wall in a reverse-Google-search him and paid for his college education,” Steve finished.

Tony blinked.  “Probably?  I don’t really remember—”

“Yeah, well,  _ I do.   _ I remember because I thought very clearly, ‘Oh he’s stubborn, I’ve always  _ liked  _ stubborn,’ and then it opened up underneath me like I was in that Hulk cage and I  _ dropped.” _

Steve stopped speaking, and Tony found for once that there was absolutely nothing he could say in response.  Their breathing echoed heavily in the room, and after a second, the tablet dropped out of Tony’s hand, clattering to the floor at their feet.  Steve moved—Tony wasn’t sure what the motion meant, but it didn’t matter, because Tony got his hands in Steve’s t-shirt and pulled, and then they were kissing.

They hadn’t done this, Tony realized dimly.  It hadn’t seemed polite, since he had been so sure—oh, God, he was an  _ idiot— _ since he had been so sure that Steve  _ didn’t return his feelings.   _

He moaned into the kiss and pulled back an eighth of an inch.  “How could I have been so  _ dumb?”  _ he groaned against Steve’s lips, and Steve’s lips answered before Steve could, sweeping back onto his and taking, taking, hot and wet and hungry, and it was  _ just how Tony wanted him.   _

Tony pulled back again, gasping, and stumbled to his feet.  “God,” he said, “my God, Steve, get up—I need your pants off  _ yesterday,  _ come on—”

“My pants  _ were  _ off yesterday,” Steve said, breathing just as hard, fumbling in his haste to stand up and kick them away.  “I chose them deliberately to make you want to take them off—”

“Good job, mission accomplished,  _ I need to suck your dick, now,  _ so just—”  Tony planted his hands on Steve’s chest and pushed, and Steve fell back into the window seat again.  After a second Steve regained his wits—ahead of Tony, Tony was just barely hanging on by a thread—and came to his knees, instead, sitting back on his feet on the two-foot-high ledge which, yes, did indeed put him and his delicious, thick cock at a very convenient height if Tony would just drop to  _ his  _ knees, which Tony proceeded to do immediately because Tony was not an  _ idiot. _

_ Anymore,  _ God.  How could he have wasted so much  _ time? _

It was always good to get his mouth on Steve’s dick, but Tony did it this time looking up.  He  _ watched,  _ this time, and saw the wonder that passed over Steve’s face, the fondness, the timorous joy as Tony forced inch after inch of Steve’s perfect, jaw-aching cock into his throat.  He tilted his head back and let Steve watch him, too; let Steve watch the devotion, the desire, the need on his face as his lips wrapped around him.  He  _ worshipped  _ Steve’s cock, kissing the head and licking the length and then swallowing it down again, as far as he could and then further yet, hand tight around the base while his other hand cupped the balls.  He ran a thumb over the delicate softness of Steve’s sack, and again, and then again, before tearing his mouth away from Steve’s length and sucking on and wetting his own fingers.  He pushed them back, behind Steve’s balls and then further, brushing Steve’s rim with the tips of them before bringing his mouth back to Steve’s cock once again.  

Steve shouted and jerked, pushing into his mouth, but then his hand was in Tony’s hair, cupping his skull so, so gently, and then the other hand and he was guiding Tony’s head.  Tony looked up again, all the warmth and love in his face that he had never dared show before, and caught the same expression looking down at him as Steve gently, inexorably, shoved into his mouth.  Tony hummed delightedly, drooling around Steve, fingers circling, circling, just barely breaching him and then retreating...

Steve came down Tony’s throat with a wordless, glorious cry, and it was only then that Tony realized that Steve had always been surprisingly quiet during sex.  Tony swallowed—the sweetness had turned out to be nothing terrible, but rather trace amounts of sucralose for some reason—and then Steve was picking him up, putting him in his lap, and kissing him deeply, licking the taste of himself out Tony’s mouth even as he clung, both of them tipping backwards until their heads thunked together into the shatter-proof window.

“Oh, God, Tony.  God, I love you, I love you  _ so much,  _ I can’t believe—this is finally  _ happening,  _ I don’t even—”

“Bed, Steve.”

* * *

They didn’t go straight to bed; Steve made love to Tony against the window first, with all of New York spread out below them, where anybody could look up and see.  “Because I’m happy,” Steve whispered, licking the sweat from Tony’s back.  “Let them see me be happy.”

Tony had moaned and pounded his fist into the window pane as Steve’s mouth moved lower, and then lower again, taking him apart with a clever tongue and a smile pressed against his skin.

* * *

After everything, after Tony had exploded with joy more times than he could count and,  _ eventually,  _ worn Steve out enough to doze, they collapsed together in Tony’s bed, laying on their on their backs with Steve’s arm behind Tony’s head—the bicep made an amazing pillow—and Tony’s legs thrown over Steve’s.  Tony basked—he had  _ earned  _ his basking—and tried, absently, to fit the acts of the day into the mental schema of Things Which Boiled Steve’s Brains he had been working on.

They wouldn’t fit.  Steve had enjoyed it all today, no problems there, but Tony could not for the life of him remember which things had produced the greatest reactions.  He could pull up a mental image of Steve throwing back his head and shouting, but had that been when Tony sucked him in again right after he came, with no recovery time, or was that when Tony had sat down and ridden him with no warning?  The fingernail marks in Tony’s shoulders were from one of the last times, yes, but had it been the one where Tony rode Steve while periodically taking breaks to lean down and kiss him until Steve was scrabbling at his chest to get him moving again?  Or was it from the time when Steve had shoved them both onto their sides and wrapped his arms around Tony, pressing their torsos together even as his hips had pumped, working them into a state of frenzy?

Tony groaned—okay, hummed—alright,  _ moaned happily,  _ Jesus—and rolled over, pressing his mouth to one of Steve’s red, perky, tooth-marked nipples.  Steve came awake in with a jerk, and Tony grinned at him.

“Oh, my  _ God,  _ Steve.”

“Yes,” Steve agreed fervently.  His eyes were wide, and he was staring at the ceiling, grinning dopily.  

Tony propped himself up, repeating himself for emphasis:  _ “Oh, my God,  _ Steve!” 

Steve nodded quickly.  “I know!”   He gestured down at their intertwined bodies.  “Ten times!”

Tony’s mind immediately blanked out, and a giddy feeling like a hot air balloon rising developed in his chest.  “What?”

“Our previous record is  _ seven,”  _ Steve pointed out, crowing just a little bit (well deserved).  “This was—”  

His face melted, and he cupped Tony’s jaw with one thumb, brushing their mouths together sweetly.  The kiss went on for long, drugged moments, a back and forth of sweetness that melted Tony’s stomach like caramel.  When Steve pulled back, Tony found himself chasing his lips, and when Steve chuckled, Tony leaned his forehead into Steve’s skin, blushing but not sure he could admit it.  Steve pressed one last kiss to Tony’s nose, and finished his sentence: “This was amazing, Tony; we’re good together, we really are.”

They were.  Tony smiled down at Steve’s hand, pressed to his own skin with the thumb smoothing an idle pattern against Tony’s stomach.  “We are,” Tony agreed out loud.  He shifted, feeling the edges of sleep creeping up around him.  “We are, we have been, we will be again, just let me take a nap first.”

Steve made a noise above him like he might have made for a puppy who got dizzy turning around and fell over.  “Okay,” he agreed.  His voice was warm like a mug of hot chocolate, and at the sound of it Tony smiled into the pillowy golden skin of Steve’s chest.

Maybe next time, they could try for eleven.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much everybody who has been reading this one!
> 
> This marks the end of my first STH fic. "First", because Juanita donated so much that the word count was going to be more than this fic could handle (even though I went, uhhh, twenty thousand words over estimate) (sorry not sorry). I'm taking November off, and my second STH fic I'll start work in December—which is appropriate, because that one's going to be WinterSoldier!Steve! :D It will likely be much less porny (actually sorry) because I would need another 60k words to make that happen right, and, uh... NO. Hopefully it will also be shorter, but I know better than to promise that at this point! If I'm right about length, it'll be done sometime around March. 
> 
> Thank you everyone who commented on this or any other fic; I may not reply to every comment, because writing comments make me ~nervous~ (although this is getting better!) but I see and appreciate all of them. THANK YOU!
> 
> And, lastly, two quick notes on Tony's projects in this. One, the TI-80-WTFE is, in fact, supposed to be read as "TI-80 What the fuck ever". That is literally what it's short for. It's supposed to be a graphing calculator that sinks to your phone, displays five million and one functions including many that are necessary for physics, chemistry, engineering, etc., as well as higher math. It retails around $35, because Tony wants every baby scientist in the world to have the same chance. And two-- I had a bit more about the nanotubes in Rhodey's suit, but took it out because it felt heavy compared to the rest of the fic. I may not have taken out enough, but I wanted the idea to be understandable and for it to really feel like Tony was working. Feel free to let me know how that went!


End file.
